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TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 



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Dugouts 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF A 
NEWFOUNDLANDER WITH THE ILL- 
FATED DARDANELLES EXPEDITION 



BY 
JOHN GALLISHAW 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 
PHOTOGRAPHS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 



Copyright, 1916, by 
The Cextury Co. 

Published, October, 1916 



¥. 



iO 



GCT 25 1916 



IG1.A445323 



Gz 



TO 
PROFESSOR CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND 

OF ALL THAT HARVARD HAS GIVEN ME I VALUE MOST 
THE FRIENDSHIP AND CONFIDENCE OF "COPEY" 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Getting There 3 

II There 33 

III Trenches 63 

IV Dugouts 93 

V Waiting for the War to Cease .... 123 

VI No Man's Land 141 

VII Wounded 164 

VIII Homeward Bound 192 

IX "Feenish" . 224 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Dugouts Frontispiece 

Lord Kitchener talking to some Australians at Anzac 9 

Scene at Lancashire Landing, Cape Helles .... 27 

Allies landing reinforcements under heavy fire of 
Turks in Dardanelles 38 

Troops at the Dardanelles leaving for the landing 
beach 47 

A remarkable view of a landing party in the Dar- 
danelles 57 

Australians in trench on Gallipoli Peninsula, using 
the periscope 67 

First line of Allies' trench zigzagging along parallel to 
the Turkish trenches 78 

Washing day in war-time 95 

Cleaning up after coming down from the trenches at 
Suvla 114 

Landing British troops from the transports at the 
Dardanelles under protection of the battleships . 131 

Australians in the trenches consider clothes a super- 
fluity 157 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Some of the barbed wire entanglements near Seddul 
Bahr are still in position 1~5 

A British battery- at work on the Peninsula . . . 1S6 

With the French at Suddul Bahr 203 

"Where troops landed in Dardanelles, showing Fort 
Sed-ne-behi battered to pieces by Allied Fleet . . 213 



TRENCHING AT 
GALLIPOLI 



The reader is hereby cautioned against regard- 
ing this narrative as in any way official. 

It is merely a record of the personal experi- 
ences of a member of the First Newfoundland 
Regiment, but the incidents described all actu- 
ally occurred. 



TRENCHING AT 
GALLIPOLI 

CHAPTER I 

GETTING THERE 

GREAT BRITAIN is at War. " 
The announcement came to Newfound- 
land out of a clear sky. Confirming it, came the 
news of the assurances of loyalty from the differ- 
ent colonies, expressed in terms of men and equip- 
ment. Newfoundland was not to be outdone. 
Her population is a little more than two hun- 
dred thousand, and her isolated position made 
garrisons unneccessary. Her only semblance of 
military training was her city brigades. People 
remembered that in the Boer War a handful of 
Newfoundlanders had enlisted in Canadian regi- 
ments, but never before had there been any talk 
of Newfoundland sending a contingent made up 
entirely of her own people and representing her 

3 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

as a colony. From the posting of the first no- 
tices bearing the simple message, "Your King 
and Country Need You," a motley crowd 
streamed into the armory in St. John's. The 
city brigades, composed mostly of young, beau- 
tifully fit athletes from rowing crews, football 
and hockey teams, enlisted in a body. Every 
train from the interior brought lumbermen, fresh 
from the mills and forests, husky, steel-muscled, 
pugnacious at the most peaceful times, frankly 
spoiling for excitement. From the outharbors 
and fishing villages came callous-handed fisher- 
men, with backs a little bowed from straining 
at the oar, accustomed to a life of danger. Ev- 
ery day there came to the armory loose- jointed, 
easy-swinging trappers and woodsmen, simple- 
spoken young men, who, in offering their keen- 
ness of vision and sureness of marksmanship, 
were volunteering their all. 

It was ideal material for soldiers. In two days 
many more than the required quota had presented 
themselves. Only five hundred men could be pre- 
pared in time to cross with the first contingent of 
Canadians. Over a thousand men offered. A 
corps of doctors asked impertinent questions 
concerning men's ancestors, inspected teeth, 

4 



GETTING THERE 

measured and pounded chests, demanded gym- 
nastic stunts, and finally sorted out the best for 
the first contingent. The disappointed ones 
were consoled by news of another contingent to 
follow in six weeks. Some men, turned down 
for minor defects, immediately went to hospital, 
were treated, and enlisted in the next contingent. 

Seven weeks after the outbreak of war the 
Newfoundlanders joined the flotilla containing 
the first contingent of Canadians. Escorted by 
cruisers and air scouts they crossed the Atlantic 
safely and went under canvas in the mud and 
wet of Salisbury Plain, in October, 1914. To the 
men from the interior, rain and exposure were 
nothing new. Hunting deer in the woods and 
birds in the marshes means just such conditions. 
The others soon became hardened to it. They 
had about settled down when they were sent on 
garrison duty, first to Fort George in the north 
of Scotland, and then to Edinburgh Castle. Ten 
months of bayonet-fighting, physical drill, and 
twenty-mile route marches over Scottish hills 
molded them into trim, erect, bronzed soldiers. 

In July of 1915, while the Newfoundlanders 
w^ere under canvas at Stob's Camp, about fifty 
miles from Edinburgh, I was transferred to Lon- 

5 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

don to keep the records of the regiment for the 
War Office. At any other time I should have 
welcomed the appointment. But then it looked 
like quitting. The battalion had just received 
orders to move to Aldershot. While we were 
garrisoning Edinburgh Castle, word came of the 
landing of the Australians and New Zealanders 
at Gallipoli. At Ypres, the Canadians had just 
then recaptured their guns and made for them- 
selves a deathless name. The Newfoundlanders 
felt that as colonials they had been overlooked. 
They were not militaristic, and they hated the 
ordinary routine of army life, but they wanted to 
do their share. That was the spirit all through 
the regiment. It was the spirit that possessed 
them on the long-waited-for day at Aldershot 
when Kitchener himself pronounced them " just 
the men I want for the Dardanelles." 

That day at Aldershot every man was given a 
chance to go back to Newfoundland. They had 
enlisted for one year only, and any man that 
wished to could demand to be sent home at the 
end of the year; and when Kitchener reviewed 
them, ten months of that year had gone. With 
the chance to go home in his grasp, every man of 
the first battalion reenlisted for the duration of 

6 



GETTING THERE 

the war. And it is on record to their eternal 
honor, that during the week preceding their de- 
parture from Aldershot, breaches of discipline 
were unknown; for over their heads hung the 
fear that thej would be punished by being kept 
back from active service. To break a rule that 
week carried with it the suspicion of cowardice. 
This was the more remarkable, because many of 
the men were fishermen, trappers, hunters, and 
lumbermen, who, until their enlistment had said 
'' Sir " to no man, and who gloried in the reputa- 
tion given them by one inspecting officer as " the 
most undisciplined lot he had ever seen." From 
the day the Canadians left Salisbury Plain for 
the trenches of Flanders, the Newfoundlanders 
had been obsessed by one idea; they must get to 
the front. 

I was in London when I heard of the inspection 
at Aldershot by Lord Kitchener, and of its re- 
sults. I had expected to be able to rejoin my 
battalion in time to go with them to the Darda- 
nelles; but when I applied for a transfer, I w^as 
told that I should have to stay in London. I 
tried to imagine myself explaining it to my 
friends in No. 11 section who were soon to em- 
bark for the Mediterranean. Apart altogether 

7 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

from that, I had gone through nearly a year of 
training, had slept on the ground in wet clothes, 
had drilled from early morning till late after- 
noon, and was perfectly fit. It had been pretty 
strenuous training, and I did not want to waste 
it in an office. 

That evening I applied to the captain in charge 
of the office for a pass to Aldershot to bid good-by 
to my friends in the regiment. He granted it; 
and the next morning a train whirled me through 
pleasant English country to Aldershot. At the 
station I met an English Tommy. 

" I suppose you 're looking for the Newfound- 
landers," he said, glancing at my shoulder badges. 
I was still wearing the service uniform I had 
worn in camp in Scotland, for I had not been 
regularly attached to the office force in London. 

" I '11 take you to Wellington Barracks," vol- 
unteered the Englishman. " That 's where your 
lot is." 

We trudged through sand, on to a gravel road, 
through the main street of the town of Aldershot, 
and into an asphalt square, surrounded by brick 
buildings, three storied, with iron-railed veran- 
das. Men in khaki leaned over the veranda 
rails, smoking and talking. A regiment was just 

8 



t?1 




GETTING THERE 

swinging in through one of the gaps between the 
lines. 

" Company, at the halt, facing left, form close 
column of platoons." Company B of the First 
Newfoundland Regiment swung into position and 
halted in the square just in front of their quar- 
ters. " Company, Dismiss ! " Hands smacked 
smartly on rifle stocks, heels clicked together, 
and the men of B Company fell out. A gray- 
haired, iron-mustached soldier, indelibly stamped 
English regular, carrying a bucket of swill across 
the square to the dump, stopped to watch them. 

" Wonder who the new lot is? " said he to a 
comrade lounging near. " I cawn't place their 
bloomin' badge." 

" 'Ave n't you 'card? " said the other. " Blaw- 
sted colonials ; Canydians, I reckon." 

A tall, loose-jointed, sandy-haired youth who 
approached the two was unmistakably a colonial ; 
there was a certain ranginess that no amount of 
drilling could ever entirely eradicate. 

" Hello, Poppa," he greeted the gray -haired 
one, who had now resumed his journey toward 
the dump. " What will you answer when your 
children say, ' Daddy, what part did you play in 
the great war? ' " 

11 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

He of the swill bucket spat coutemptuously, 
disdainiiiii to answer. The saudv-haired youth 
contiuued airily across the square aud up the 
stairs that led to his quarters. I followed him 
up the stairs and through a door ou which was 
priuted " Thirty-two meu," aud below, iu chalk, 
" B Company.'' We entered a long, bare-look- 
ing room, down each side of which ran rows of 
iron cots. Equipments were piled neatly on the 
beds and on shelves above; two iron-legged, bar- 
rack-room tables and a few benches completed 
the furniture. At oue of the tables sat two 
young men. Oue of them, a massively built 
young giaut, looked up as the door opened. 

*' Hello, Art," he said to my conductor. 
" You 're just the man we want. Don't you want 
to join us in a party to go up to London? '' 

" No," answered Art ; " if you break leave this 
week, you don't get to the front." 

The big fellow stretched his massive frame in 
a capacious yawn. 

" I don't think we '11 ever get to the front," he 
said. " This is n't a regiment. It 's an oflQcers' 
training corps. They gave out a lot more stripes 
to-day, and one fellow got a star — made him a 
second lieutenant. You 'd think this was the 

12 



GETTING THERE 

American army ; it 's nothing but stars and 
stripes. Soon 't will be an honor to be a private. 
The worst of it is, they '11 come along to me and 
say, * What 's your name and number?' The 
only time they ever talk to me is to ask me my 
name and number; and when I tell them, they 
put me on crime for not calling them * Sir,' and 
when I don't they have me up for insolence." 

Art laughed. " Cheer up, old boy," he said ; 
" you '11 soon be at the front, and then you won't 
have to call anybody ' Sir.' " 

" What 's the latest news about the regiment? " 
I inquired of my conductor. 

" I suppose you know that the King and Lord 
Kitchener reviewed us," he said, " and this after- 
noon we are to be reviewed once more. It 's a 
formality. We should leave this evening or to- 
morrow for the front. I suppose we '11 go to 
some seaport town and embark there." 

While we were talking a bugle blew. 
" There 's the cook-house bugle," said Art. 
" Come along and have some dinner with us." 
He took some tin dishes from the shelves above 
the beds, gave me one, and we joined in the rush 
down the stairs and across the square to the 
cook house. 

13 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

In the army, the cook house corresponds to 
the dining-room of civilization. B Company 
cook house was a long, narrow, wooden build- 
ing. On each side of a middle aisle that led to 
the kitchen were plain wooden tables, each ac- 
commodating sixteen men, eight on each side. 
When we arrived, the building was full. When 
you are eating as the guest of the Government, 
there is no hostess to reserve for you the choice 
portions ; therefore it behooves you to come early. 
In the army, if you are not there at the beginning 
of a meal, you go hungry. Thus are inculcated 
habits of punctuality. But if you are called and 
the meal is not ready, you have your revenge. 
Two hundred and sixty-two men of B Company 
were showing their disapproval of the cooks' lack 
of punctuality. Screeches, yells, and cat cries 
rivaled the din of stamping feet and the bang- 
ing of tin dishes. Occasionally the door of the 
kitchen swung open and afforded a glimpse of 
three sweating cooks and their group of help- 
ers, working frenziedly. Sometimes the noise 
stopped long enough to allow some spokesman to 
express his opinion of the cooks, and their fitness 
for their jobs, with that delightful simplicity and 
charming candor that made the language of the 

14 



GETTING THERE 

First Newfoundland Regiment so refreshing. 
Loud applause served the double purpose of en- 
couraging the speakers and drowning the reply 
of the incensed cooks. This was a pity, because 
the language of an army cook is worth hearing, 
and very enlightening. Men who formerly 
prided themselves on their profanity have lis- 
tened, envious and subdued, awed by the origi- 
nality and scope of a cook's vocabulary, and 
thenceforth quit, realizing their own amateurish- 
ness. Occasionally, though, one of the cooks, 
stung to retort, would appear, wiping his hands 
on his overalls, and in a few well-chosen phrases, 
cover some of the more recent exploits of the 
one who had angered him, or endeavor to clear 
his own character, always in language brilliant, 
fluent, and descriptive. 

But the longest wait must come to an end, 
and at last the door of the kitchen swung open 
and the helpers appeared. Some mysterious 
mess fund had been tapped, and that day dinner 
was particularly good. First came soup, then 
a liberal helping of roast beef, with potatoes, 
tomatoes, and peas, followed by plum pudding. 
B Company soon finished. In the army, dinner 
is a thing not of ceremony, but of necessity. 

15 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

I did not wait for my sandy -haired friend ; his 
name, I gathered, was Art Pratt. He and a 
neighbor were adjusting a difference regarding 
the ownership of a combination knife, fork, and 
spoon. I found my way back to the room marked 
" Thirty-two men." Just as I entered, I heard 
the bugle sound the " half-hour dress." 

All about the room men were busy shining 
shoes, polishing buttons, rolling puttees, and ad- 
justing equipments. This took time, and the 
half hour for preparation soon passed. In the 
square below, at the sound of the " Fall In," 
eleven hundred men of the first battalion of the 
First Newfoundland Regiment sprang briskly to 
attention. After their commanding officer had 
inspected them, the battalion formed into col- 
umn of route. As the tail of the column swung 
through the square, I joined in. A short march 
along the Aldershot Road brought us to the 
dusty parade ground. Here we were drawn up 
in review order, to await the inspecting general. 
When he arrived, he rode quickly through the 
lines, then ordered the men to be formed into 
a three-sided square. From the center of this 
human stadium he addressed them. 

" Men of the First Newfoundland Regiment," 
16 



GETTING THERE 

said he, " a week ago you were reviewed by His 
Majesty the King and by Lord Kitchener. On 
that day, Lord Kitchener told you that you were 
just the men he needed for the Dardanelles. I 
have been deputed to tell you that you are to 
embark to-night. You have come many miles to 
help us; and when you reach the Dardanelles, 
you will be opposed by the bravest fighters in 
the world. It is my duty and my pleasure on 
behalf of the British Government and of His 
Majesty the King to thank you and to wish you 
God-speed." 

This was the moment the Newfoundlanders 
had been waiting for for nearly a year. From 
eleven hundred throats broke forth wave upon 
wave of cheering. Then came an instant's hush, 
the bugle band played the general salute, and 
the regiment presented arms. Gravely the gen- 
eral acknowledged the compliment, spurred his 
horse, and rode rapidly away. The regiment re- 
formed, marched back to barracks, and dis- 
missed. 

I joined the crowd that pressed around the 
board on which were posted the daily orders. 
My friend Art Pratt was acting as spokes- 
man. 

17 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" A and B Companies leave here at eight this 
evening," he said. " C and D Companies ah 
hour later. Thej march to Aldershot railway 
station, and entrain there." 

I left the group around the board and walked 
over to the office of the adjutant. He was busy 
giving instructions about his baggage. 

"Well," he said, " what do you want?" 

" I want to go with the battalion this even- 
ing, sir," I said. 

He questioned me ; and when he found out all 
the facts, told me that I could n't go. I did n't 
wait any longer. As I went out the door, I 
could just hear him murmur something about my 
not having the necessary papers. But I was n't 
thinking of papers just then. I was wondering 
how I could get away. I vowed that if I could 
possibly do it I would go with the battalion. I 
was passing one of the stairways when I heard 
some one yell, " Is that you. Corporal Galli- 
shaw? " I turned. It was Sam Hiscock, one of 
my old section. 

" Hello, Sam," I said. " I did n't know where 
to look for old No. 11 section. They 've all been 
changed about since they came here." 

" Come up this way," said Sam, and I fol- 
18 



GETTING THERE 

lowed him up the stairs and into a room occu- 
pied by the men of No. 11 section, my old sec- 
tion at Stob's Camp in Scotland. 

Disconsolately I told them my plight, and dis- 
closed my plan guardedly. Sam Hiscock, faith- 
ful and loyal to his section, voiced the sentiment. 
" Come on with old No. 11; we '11 look after you. 
All you have to do is hang around here, and 
when we 're moving off just fall in with us, and 
nobody '11 notice then ; 't will be dark." 

" The big trouble is," I said, " I have no equip- 
ment, no overcoat, no kit-bag; in fact, no any- 
thing." 

" You 've got a rain coat," said Pierce Power, 
" and I 've got a belt you can have." Another 
offered a piece of shoulder strap, and some one 
else volunteered to show me where a pile of 
equipments were kept in a room. I followed him 
out to the room. In the corner a man was sit- 
ting on the floor, smoking. He was the guard 
over the equipments. He belonged to an Eng- 
lish regiment, and so did the equipments. Sam 
Hiscock engaged him in conversation for a few 
minutes. The topic he introduced was a timely 
one: beer. While Hiscock and the guard went 
to the canteen to do some research work in 

19 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

beverages, I took his place guarding the equip- 
ments. By the time the two returned I had 
managed to acquire a passable looking kit. I 
spent the rest of the afternoon going around 
among my friends and telling them what I pro- 
posed to do. At eight o'clock I joined the crowd 
that cheered A and B Companies as they moved 
away, in charge of the adjutant and the colonel. 
When the major called C and D Companies to 
attention, I fell in with my old section C Com- 
pany. The lieutenant in charge of the platoon 
I was with saw me, but in the dusk he could not 
recognize my face. I was thankful for the con- 
venient darkness; and because it was fear of his 
invention that caused it, I blessed the name of 
Count Zeppelin. 

" Where 's your rifle? " asked the lieutenant. 

•* Have n't got one, sir," I said. 

The lieutenant called the platoon sergeant. 
" Sergeant," he snapped, " get that man a rifle." 
The sergeant doubled back to the barracks and 
returned with a rifle. The lieutenant moved 
away, and I had just begun to congratulate my- 
self, when disaster overtook me. The platoon 
was numbered off. There was one man too many, 
and of course I w^as the man. The lieutenant 

20 



GETTING THERE 

did not waste any time in vain controversy. He 
ordered me out of his platoon. 

" Where shall I go? " I asked. 

" As far as I am concerned," he answered, 
" you can go straight to hell." 

I left his platoon; but when I did, I carried 
with me the precious rifle. The sergeant, a thor- 
ough man, had been thoughtful enough to bring 
with it a bayonet. 

The time had now come to risk everything on 
one throw. I did. In the army, all orders from 
the commanding officer of a regiment are trans- 
mitted through the adjutant. I knew that both 
the colonel and the adjutant had gone an hour 
ago, and could not now be reached. So I walked 
up to Captain March, the captain of D Com- 
pany, saluted, and told him that I had been or- 
dered to join his company. 

" Ordered by whom? " he asked. 

" By the Adjutant," said I, brazenly. 

" I have n't had any orders about that," said 
Captain March. 

Just then, Captain O'Brien, who had been my 
company commander in camp, came up. I think 
he must have known what I was trying to do. 

" If the Adjutant said so, it 's all right," he 
21 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

said, thus leaving tlie burden of proof on me. 

" Go ahead then," said Captain March ; " fall 
in." 

I fell in. We formed up, aud swung out of 
the square and along the road that led to the 
station. At intervals, where a street lamp threw 
a subdued glare, crowds cheered us; for even 
Aldershot, clearing house of fighting forces, had 
not yet ceased to thrill at the sight of men leav- 
ing for the front. Half an hour after we left 
the barracks, we were all safely stowed away in 
the train, ten men in each of the compartment 
coaches. Just as we were pulling out, a soldier 
went from coach to coach, shaking hands with 
all the men. He came to our coach, put his head 
in through the window, and shook hands with 
each man. I was on the inside. " Good-by, old 
chap," he said, then gasped in astonishment. 
The train was just beginning to move. It was 
well under way when he recovered himself. 
" Gallishaw," he shouted, "you 're under arrest." 
It was the sergeant-major of the Record Office 
I had quitted in London. 

During war time in England, troop trains have 
the right of way over all others. All night our 
train rattled along, with only one stop. That 

22 



GETTING THERE 

was at Exeter where we were given a lunch sup- 
plied by the Mayoress and ladies of the town. 
I spent the night under the seat; for I thought 
the sergeant-major might telegraph to haye the 
train searched for me. Early next morning, we 
shunted onto a wharf in Devonport, alongside 
the converted cruiser Megantic. Her sides were 
already lined with soldiers; another battalion of 
eleven hundred men, the Warwickshire Regi- 
ment, was aboard. As soon as our battalion had 
detrained, I hid behind some boxes on the pier; 
and when the last of the men were walking up 
the gangplank. I joined them. A steward 
handed each man a ticket, bearing the number of 
his berth. I received one with the rest. Since I 
was in uniform, the steward had no way of tell- 
ing whether or not I belonged to the Newfound- 
landers. 

All that day the Megantic stayed in port, wait- 
ing for darkness to begin the voyage. In the 
afternoon, w^e pulled out into the stream; and 
at sunset began threading our way betw^een 
buoys, down the tortuous channel to the open sea. 
A couple of wicked-looking destroyers escorted 
us out of Devonport; but as soon as we had 
cleared the harbor, they steamed up and shot 

23 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

ahead of us. The next morning they had disap- 
peared. The first night out I ate nothing, but 
the next day I managed to secure a ticket to the 
dining-room. With two battalions on board, 
there was no room on the Mcgantic for drills; 
the only work we had was boat drill once a day. 
Each man was assigned his place in the life- 
boats. At the stern of the ship a big 4.7 gun 
was mounted; and at various other points were 
placed five or six machine guns, in preparation 
for a possible submarine attack. In addition, 
we depended for escape on our speed of twenty- 
three to twenty-five knots. 

During the boat drills, I stayed below with 
the Warwickshire Regiment, or, as we called 
them, the Warwicks. This regiment w^as formed 
of men of the regular army, who had been all 
through the first gruelling part of the campaign, 
beginning with the retreat from Mons, to the 
battle of the Marne. They were the remnants 
of " French's contemptible little army." Every 
one of them had been wounded so seriously as 
to be unable to return to the front. Ordinarily 
they would have been discharged, but they were 
men whose w^hole lives had been spent in the 
army. Few of them were under forty, so they 

24 



GETTING THERE 

were now being sent to Khartum in the Sudan, 
for garrison duty. At night, I came on deck. 
In the submarine area ships showed no lights, 
so I could go around without fear of discovery. 
The only people I had to avoid were the officers, 
and the caste system of the army kept them to 
their own part of the ship. The men I knew 
would sooner cut their tongues out than inform 
on me. 

Just before sunset of the third night out, be- 
cause we passed several ships, we knew we were 
approaching land. At nine o'clock, we were di- 
rectly opposite the Rock of Gibraltar. After 
we had left Gibraltar behind, all precautions 
were doubled; we were now in the zone of sub- 
marine operations. Ordinarily we steamed 
along at eighteen or nineteen knots; but the 
night before we fetched Malta, we zigzagged 
through the darkness, with engines throbbing at 
top speed, until the entire ship quivered and 
shook, and every bolt groaned in protest. With 
nearly three thousand lives in his care, our cap- 
tain ran no risks. But the night passed without 
incident. The next day, at noon, we were safe 
in one of the fortified harbors of Malta. 

After we left Malta, since I knew I could not 
25 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

tlieu be seut back to Englaud, I reported myself 
to the adjutant. He and the colonel were in 
the orderly room, as the office of a regiment is 
called. The seri^eaut-major in charge of the 
orderly room had been taken ill two or three 
days before, and the other men had been swamped 
by the extra rush of clerical work, incident on 
the departure of a regiment for the front. Per- 
haps this had a good deal to do with the lenient 
treatment 1 received. The adjutant came to the 
point at once. That is a characteristic of ad- 
jutants. 

" Gallishaw," he said, " do you want to come 
to work here? " 

'^ Yes, sir," I answered. 

" All right," he said ; " you 're posted to B 
Company.'' 

That night, it ap})eared in orders that " Lance- 
Corporal Gallishaw has embarked with the bat- 
talion, and is posted to B Company for pay." 
The only comment the colonel made on the af- 
fair was to say to the adjutant, " I 've often heard 
of men leaving a ship when she is going on active 
service, but I 've never heard of men stowing 
away to get there." Thus I went to work in the 
orderly room; and in the orderly room I stayed 

26 







1 





_i — 


"~^ 


n-'¥ 


-'-, 




-.,*-^. 




— ~ 


~ '1 f 


'^ 






^ r - .^ 









♦ ;, 



GETTING THERE 

until we arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, and en- 
trained for Cairo. At Heliopolis, on the desert 
near Cairo, we went into camp. There I joined 
my company and drilled with it, and bade 
good-by to the orderly room and all its works. 
We stayed in Egypt only ten days or so to 
get accustomed to the heat, and to change our 
heavy uniforms and hats for the light-weight 
duck uniforms and sun helmets, suitable for the 
climate on the Peninsula of Gallipoli. The heat 
at Heliopolis was too intense to permit of our 
drilling very much. In the very early morning, 
before the sun was really strong, we marched 
out a mile across the desert, skirmished about 
for an hour or so, and returned to camp for 
breakfast. The rest of the day we were free. 
Ordinarily we spent the morning sweltering in 
our marquees, saying unprintable and uncom- 
plimentary things about the Egyptian weather. 
In the late afternoon and evening, we went to 
Cairo. About a mile from where we were 
camped, *a street car line ran into the city. To 
get to it we generally rode across the desert on 
donkeys. Every afternoon, as soon as we had 
finished dinner, little native boys pestered us 
to hire donkeys. They were the same boys who 

29 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

poked their heads into our marquees each morn- 
ing and implored us to buy papers. We needed 
no reveille in Egypt. The thing that woke us 
was a native yelling " Eengaleesh paper, veera 
good; veera good, veera nice; fifty thousand 
Eengaleesh killed in the Dardanelle ; veera good, 
veera nice." 

About a quarter of a mile across the desert 
from us was a camp for convalescent Australians 
and New Zealanders. As soon as the Austra- 
lians found that we were colonials like them- 
selves, they opened their hearts to us in the 
breezy way that is characteristically Australian. 
There is a Canadian hospital unit in Cairo. One 
medical school from Ontario enlisted almost en 
juasse. Professors and pupils carry on work 
and lectures in Egj-pt just as they did in Canada. 
It was not an uncommon thing to see on a Cairo 
street a group composed of an Australian, a New 
Zealander, a Canadian, and a Newfoundlander. 
And once we managed to rake up a South Afri- 
can. The clean-cut, alert-looking, bronzed Aus- 
tralians, who impressed you as having been 
raised far from cities, made a tremendous hit 
with the Newfoundlanders. One chap who was 
returning home minus a leg, gave us a young 

30 



GETTING THERE 

wallaby that he had brought with him from 
Australia. One of our boys had a small don- 
key, not much larger than a collie dog, that he 
bought from a native for a few shillings. The 
men vied with each other in feeding the animals. 
Some fellows took the kangaroo one evening, and 
he acquired a taste for beer. The donkey's taste 
for the same beverage was already well devel- 
oped. After that, the two were the center of 
convivial gatherings. The wallaby got drunk 
faster, but the donkey generally got away with 
more beer. When we were certain we were to 
go to the front, a meeting was held in our mar- 
quee. It was unanimously decided that not a 
man was to take a cent with him — everybody 
was to leave for the front absolutely broke — " to 
avoid litigation among our heirs," the spokesman 
said. The wallaby and the donkey benefited. 
The night before we left the desert camp, they 
were wined and dined. The next morning, the 
kangaroo, bearing unmistakable marks of his de- 
bauch, showed up to say good-by. We were not 
allowed to take him with us, and he was rele- 
gated to the Zoo in Cairo. The donkey, who had 
been steadily mixing his drinks from four o'clock 
the afternoon before, did not see us go. When 

31 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

we moved off, lie was lying unconscious under 
one of the transport wagons. 

Although we took advantage of every oppor- 
tunity for pleasure, we had not lost sight of our 
real object. We were grateful for a chance to 
visit the Pyramids, and enjoyed our meeting with 
the men from the Antipodes, but Egypt soon 
palled. The Newfoundlanders' comment was al- 
ways the same. " It 's some place, but it is n't 
the front. AYe came to fight, not for sightsee- 
ing." 



32 



CHAPTER II 

THERE 

IT was with eleven hundred eager spirits that 
I lined up on a Sunday evening early in 
August, 1915, on the deck of a troopship, in 
Mudros Harbor, which is the center of the his- 
toric island of Lemnos, about fifty miles from 
Gallipoli. Around us lay all sorts of ships, from 
ocean leviathans to tiny launches and rovvboats. 
There were gray and black-painted troopers, 
their rails lined with soldiers, immense four-fun- 
neled men-o'-war, and brightly lighted, white 
hospital ships, with their red crosses outlined in 
electric lights. The landing officer left us in a 
little motor boat. We watched him glide slowly 
shoreward, where we could faintly discern 
through the dusk the white of the tents that were 
the headquarters for the array at Lemnos. To 
the right of the tents, we could see the hospital 
for wounded Australians and New Zealanders. 
A French battleship dipped its flag as it passed, 
and our boys sang the Marseillaise. 

33 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

A mail that bad come that day was being 
sorted. Wbile we waited, each man was served 
with his " iron ration." This consisted of a one- 
pound tin of pressed corn beef — the much-hated 
and much-maligned " bully beef " — a bag of bis- 
cuits, and a small tin that held two tubes of 
" Oxo/' with tea and sugar in specially con- 
structed air-and-damp-proof envelopes. This 
was an emergency ration, to be kept in case of 
direst need, and to be used only to ward off 
actual starvation. After that, we were given 
our ammunition, two hundred and fifty rounds 
to each man. 

But what brought home to me most the se- 
riousness of our venture was the solitary sheet 
of letter paper with its envelope, that was given 
to every man, to be used for a parting letter 
home. For some poor chaps it was indeed the 
last letter. Then we went over the side, and 
aboard the destroyer that was to take us to Suvla 
Bay. 

The night had been well chosen for a surprise 
landing. There was no moon, but after a little 
while the stars came out. Away on the port bow 
we could see the dusky outline of land ; and once, 
when we were about half way, an airship soared 

34 



THERE 

phantom-like out of the night, poised over us a 
short time, then ducked out of sight. At first 
the word ran along the line that it was a hostile 
airship, but a few inquiries soon reassured us. 

Suddenly w^e changed our direction. We were 
near Cape Hellas, which is the lowest point of 
the Peninsula of Gallipoli. Under Sir Ian Ham- 
ilton's scheme, it was here that a decoy party 
was to land to draw the Turks from Anzac. Si- 
multaneously, an overwhelming force was to land 
at Suvla Bay and at Anzac, to make a surprise 
attack on the Turks' right flank. Presently, we 
were going up shore past the wrecked steamer 
River Clyde, the famous " Ship of Troy," from 
the side of which the Australians had issued after 
the ship had been beached ; past the shore hitherto 
nameless, but now known as Anzac. Australian, 
New Zealand, Army Corps, those five letters 
stand for; but to those of us who have been on 
Gallipoli, they stand for a great deal more : they 
represent the achievement of the impossible. 
They are a glorious record of sacrifice, reckless 
devotion, and unselfish courage. To put each 
letter there cost the men from Australasia ten 
thousand of their best soldiers. 

And so we edged our way along, fearing mines, 
35 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

or, even more disastrous than mines, discovery 
by the enemy. From the Australasians over at 
Anzac, we could hear desultory rifle fire. Once 
we heard the boom of some big guns that seemed 
almost alongside the ship. Four hours it took 
us to go fifty miles, in a destroyer that could 
make thirty-two knots easily. By one o'clock, 
the stars had disappeared, and for perhaps three 
quarters of an hour we edged our way through 
pitch darkness. We gradually slowed down, 
until we had almost stopped. Something 
scraped along our side. Somebody said it was 
a floating mine, but it turned out to be a buoy 
that had been put there by the navy to mark the 
channel. Out of the gloom directly in front 
some one hailed, and our people answered. 

"Who have you on board?" we heard the 
casual English voice say. Then came the reply 
from our colonel : 

" Newfoundlanders." 

There was to me something reassuring about 
that cool, self-contained voice out of the night. 
It made me feel that we were being expected 
and looked after. 

" Move up those boats," I heard the English 
voice say, and from right under our bow a naval 

36 



I 







\ , js 



t 



ii 




© 



THERE 

launch, with a middy in charge, swerved along- 
side. In a little while it, with its string of 
boats, was securely fastened. 

Just before we went into the boats, the ad- 
jutant passed me. 

" Well," he said, " you 've got your wish. In 
a few minutes you '11 be ashore. Let me know 
how you like it when you 're there a little while." 

" Yes, sir," I said. But I never had a chance 
to tell him. The first shrapnel shell fired at the 
Newfoundlanders burst near him, and he had 
scarcely landed when he was taken off the Penin- 
sula, seriously wounded. 

In a short time we had all filed into the boats. 
There was no noise, no excitement ; just now and 
then a whispered command. I was in a tug with 
about twenty others who formed the rear guard. 
The wind had freshened considerably, and was 
now blowing so hard that our unwieldy tug dared 
not risk a landing. We came in near enough 
to watch the other boats. About twenty yards 
from shore they grounded. We could see the 
boys jump over the side and wade ashore. 
Through the half darkness we could barely dis- 
tinguish them forming up on the beach. Soon 
they were lost to sight. 

39 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

During the Turkish summer, dawn comes 
early. We transhipped from our tug to a 
lighter. When it grounded on the beach, day 
was just breaking. Daylight disclosed a steeply 
sloping beach, scarred with ravines. The place 
where we landed ran between sheer cliffs. A 
short distance up the hill we could see our bat- 
talion digging themselves in. To the left I 
could see the boats of another battalion. Even 
as I watched, the enemy's artillery located them. 
It was the first shell I had ever heard. It came 
over the hill close to me, screeching through the 
air like an express train going over a bridge at 
night. Just over the boat I was watching it 
exploded. A few of the soldiers slipped quietly 
from their seats to the bottom of the boat. At 
first I did not realize that anybody had been hit. 
There was no sign of anything having happened 
out of the ordinary, no confusion. As soon as 
the boat touched the beach, the wounded men 
were carried by their mates up the hill to a tem- 
porary dressing station. The first shell was the 
beginning of a bombardment. " Beachy Bill," 
a battery that we were to become better ac- 
quainted with, was in excellent shape. Every 
few minutes a shell burst close to us. Shrapnel 

40 



THERE 

bullets and fragments of shell casing forced us 
to huddle under the baggage for protection. A 
little to the left, some Australians were severely 
punished. Shell after shell burst among them. 
A regiment of Sikh troops, mule drivers, and 
transport men were caught half way up the 
beach. Above the din of falling shrapnel and 
the shriek of flying shells rose the piercing 
scream of wounded mules. The Newfound- 
landers did not escape. That morning " Beachy 
Bill's " gunners played no favorites. On all 
sides the shrapnel came in a shower. Less often 
a cloud of thick black smoke, and a hole twenty 
feet deep showed the landing place of a high 
explosive shell. The most amazing thing was the 
coolness of the men. The Newfoundlanders 
might have been practising trench digging in 
camp in Scotland. When a man was hit, some 
one gave him first aid, directed the stretcher 
bearers where to find him, and resumed digging. 
About nine, I was told off to go to the beach 
with one man to guard the baggage. We picked 
our way carefully, taking advantage of every bit 
of cover. About half way down, we heard the 
warning shriek of a shell, and threw ourselves 
on our faces. Almost instantly we were in 

41 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

the center of a perfect whirlwind of shells. 
" Beachy Bill " had just located a lot of Aus- 
tralians, digging themselves in about fifty yards 
away from us. The first few shells fell short, 
but only the first few. After that, the Turkish 
gunners got the range, and the Australians had 
to move, followed by the shells. As soon as we 
were sure that the danger was over, we contin- 
ued to the beach, and aboard the lighter that 
contained our baggage. We had not had a 
chance to get any breakfast before we started, 
"but the sergeant of our platoon had promised 
to send a corporal and another man to relieve 
us in two hours. About twelve o'clock the 
sergeant appeared, to tell me to wait until one 
o'clock, when I should be relieved. He brought 
the news that the adjutant had been wounded 
seriously in the arm and leg. At the very be- 
ginning of the bombardment, a shell had hit him. 
About forty of our men had been hit, the ser- 
geant said, and the regiment was preparing to 
change its position. He showed us the new po- 
sition, and told us to rejoin there as soon as 
relieved. 

About a hundred yards to the right of us rose 
a cliff that prevented our boat being seen by the 

42 



THERE 

enemy. The Turks were devoting their attention 
to some boats landing well to the left of us. The 
officer in charge of landing was taking advan- 
tage of this and had a gang near us working on 
dugouts for stores and supplies. Right under 
the cliffs a detachment of engineers were build- 
ing a landing as coolly as if they were at home. 
Every fifteen or twenty minutes, to show us that 
he was still doing business, " Beachy Bill " sent 
over a few shells in our direction. The gunners 
could not see us, but they wanted to warn us 
not to presume too much. As soon as the first 
shell landed near us, the officer in charge 
shouted nonchalantly, " Take cover, everybody." 
He waited until he was certain every man had 
found a hiding place, then effaced himself. The 
courage of the officers of the English army 
amounts almost to foolhardiness. The men to 
relieve us did not arrive at once, as promised. 
The hot afternoon passed slowly. Each hour 
was a repetition of the preceding one. " Beachy 
Bill " was surpassing himself. From far out in 
the bay our warships replied. 

About five o'clock I espied one of the New- 
foundland lieutenants a little way up the beach 
in charge of a party of twenty men. I signaled 

43 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

to liim and he came down to our boat. The 
party had come to unload the baggage. When 
I asked the lieutenant about being relieved, he 
told me that he had sent a corporal and one 
man down about one o'clock, and ordered me 
back to the regiment to report to Lieutenant 
Steele. Half way up the beach we found Lieu- 
tenant Steele. The corporal sent down to re- 
lieve me, he told me, had been hit by a shell just 
after he left his dugout. The man wdth him 
had not been heard from. I went back to the 
beach, and found the man perched up on top 
of the cliff to the right of the lighter. He had 
been waiting there all the afternoon for the cor- 
poral to join him. 

Having solved the mystery of the failure of 
the relief party, I returned to my platoon. Their 
first stopping place had proved untenable. All 
day they had been subjected to a merciless and 
devastating shelling, and their first day of war 
had cost them sixty-five men. They were now 
dug in in a new and safer position. They were 
only waiting for darkness to advance to reinforce 
the firing line that was now about four miles 
ahead. Since to get to our firing line we had to 
cross the dried-up bed of a salt lake, no move 

44 



THERE 

could be made in daylight. That evening we 
received our ration of rum, and formed up si- 
lently in a long line two deep, beside our dug- 
outs. I fell in with my section, beside Art 
Pratt, the sandy-haired chap I had met in Alder- 
shot. He had been cleaning his rifle that after- 
noon when a shell landed right in his dugout, 
wounded the man next him, knocked the bolt of 
the rifle out of his hand, but left him unhurt. 
He accepted it as an omen that he would come 
out all right, and was grinning delightedly while 
he confided to me his narrow escape, and was as 
happy as a schoolboy at the thought of getting 
into action. 

Under cover of darkness we moved away si- 
lently, until we came to the border of the Salt 
Lake. Here we extended, and crossed it in open 
order, then through three miles of knee high, 
prickly underbrush, to where our division was 
entrenched. Our orders were to reinforce the 
Irish. The Irish sadly needed reinforcing. 
Some of them had been on the Peninsula for 
months. Many of them are still there. From 
the beach to the firing line is not over four 
miles, but it is a ghastly four miles of graveyard. 
Everywhere along the route are small wooden 

45 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

crosses, mute record of advances. Where the 
crosses are thickest, there the fighting was fierc- 
est; and where the fighting was fiercest, there 
were the Irish. On every cross, besides a man's 
name and the date of his death, is the name of 
his regiment. No other regiments have so many 
crosses as the Dublins and the Munsters. And 
where the shrapnel flew so fast that bodies man- 
gled beyond hope of identity were buried in a 
common grave, there also are the Dublins and 
the Munsters ; and the cross over them reads, " In 
Memoi'y of Unknown Comrades." 

The line on the left was held by the Twenty- 
ninth Division; the Dublins, the Munsters, the 
King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the New- 
foundlanders made up the Eighty-eighth Bri- 
gade. The Newfoundlanders were reinforce- 
ments. From the very first day of the Gallipoli 
campaign, the other three regiments had formed 
part of what General Sir Ian Hamilton in his 
report calls " The incomparable Twenty-ninth 
Division." When the first landing was made, 
this division, with the New Zealanders, pene- 
trated to the top of Achi Baba, the hill that 
commanded the Narrows. For forty-eight hours 
the result was in doubt. The British attacked 

46 



THERE 

with bayonet and bombs, were driven back, and 
repeatedly reattacked. The New Zealanders 
finally succeeded in reaching the top, followed 
by the Eighty-eighth Brigade, The Irish fought 
on the tracks of a railroad that leads into Con- 
stantinople. At the end of forty-eight hours of 
attacks and counter attacks, the position was 
considered secure. The worn-out soldiers were 
relieved and went into dugouts. Then the re- 
lieving troops were attacked by an overwhelming 
hostile force, and the hill was lost. A battery 
placed on that hill could have shelled the Nar- 
rows and opened to our ships the way to Con- 
stantinople. The hill was never retaken. When 
reinforcements came up it was too late. The re- 
inforcements lost their way. In his report. Gen- 
eral Hamilton attributes our defeat to " fatal in- 
ertia." Just how fatal was that inertia was 
known only to those who formed some of the 
burial parties. 

After the first forty-eight hours we 'settled 
down to regular trench warfare. The routine 
was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest 
dugouts, four days in the trenches again, and so 
forth, although three or four months later our 
ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight 

49 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

days and rested only four. We had expected 
four days' rest after our first trip to the firing 
line, but at the end of two days came word of 
a determined advance of the enemy. We ar- 
rived just in time to beat it off. Our trenches 
instead of being at the top were at the foot of 
the hill that meant so much to us. 

The ground here was a series of four or five 
hog-back ridges, about a hundred yards apart. 
Behind these towered the hill that was our ob- 
jective. From the nearest ridge, about seven 
hundred yards in front of us, the Turks had all 
that day constantly issued in mass formation. 
During that attack we were repaid for the havoc 
wrought by Beachy Bill. As soon as the Turks 
topped the crest, they were subjected to a de- 
moralizing rain of shell from the navy and from 
our artillery. Against the hazy blue of the sky- 
line we could see the dark mass clearly silhou- 
etted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed 
in the middle of the approaching columns, the 
sides of the column would bulge outward for an 
instant, then close in again. Meanwhile, every 
man in our trenches stood on the firing platform, 
head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed 
bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order 

50 



THERE 

to begin firing. Still the Turks came on, big, 
black, bewhiskered six footers, reforming ranks 
and filling up their gaj)S with fresh men, Now 
they were only six hundred yards away. But 
still there was no order to open fire. It was un- 
canny. At five hundred yards our fire was still 
withheld. When the order came, " At four hun- 
dred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling 
with excitement. Still the Turks came on, mag- 
nificently determined, but it was too desperate a 
venture. The chances against them were too 
great, our artillery and machine gun fire too de- 
structively accurate. Some few Turks reached 
almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by 
rifle bullets. " Allah ! Allah ! " yelled the Turks, 
as they came on. A sweating, grimly happy ma- 
chine gun sergeant was shouting to the Turkish 
army in general, " It 's not a damn bit of good 
to yell to Allah now." Our artillery opened huge 
gaps in their lines, our machine guns piled them 
dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own 
casualties were very slight; but of the waves of 
Turks that surged over the crest all that day, 
only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled 
back to their own lines. 

That was the last big attack the Turks made. 
51 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

From that time on, it was virtually two armies 
in a state of siege. That was the first night the 
Newfoundlanders went into the trenches as a 
unit. A and B Companies held the firing line, 
C and D were in the support trenches. Before 
that, they filled up gaps in the Dublins or in the 
Munsters, or in the King's Own Scottish Bor- 
derers. These regiments were our tutors. 
Mostly they were composed of veterans who had 
put in years of training in Egypt or in India. 
The Irish were jolly, laughing men with a soft 
brogue, and an amazing sense of humor. The 
Scotch were dour, silent men, who wasted few 
words. Some of the Scotchmen were young fel- 
lows who had been recruited in Scotland after 
war broke out. One of these chaps shared my 
watch with me the first night. At dark, sentry 
groups were formed, three reliefs of two men 
each ; these two men stood with their heads over 
the parapet watching for any movement in the 
no man's land between the lines; that accounts 
for the surprisingly large number of men one 
sees wounded in the head. The Scottie and I 
stood close enough together to carry on a con- 
versation in whispers. It turned out that he 
had been training in Scotland at the same camp 

52 



THERE 

where the Newfoundlanders were. He had been 
on the Peninsula since April, and was all in 
from dysentery and lack of food. " Nae meat," 
was the laconic way he expressed it. Like every 
Scotchman since the world began, he answered 
to the name of " Mac." He pointed out to me 
the position of the enemy trenches. 

" It 's just aboot fower hundred yairds," he 
said, " but you '11 no get a chance to fire ; there 's 
wurrkin' pairties oot the nicht." Then as an 
afterthought, he added gloomily, " There 's no 
chance of your gettin' hit either." 

" Why," I asked him in astonishment, " you 
don't want to get hit, do you? " 

Mac looking at me pityingly. " Man," he 
burst out, " when ye 're here as long as I 've been 
here, ye '11 be prayin' fer a ' Blighty one.' " 

Blighty is the Tommies' nickname for London, 
and a " Blighty one " is a wound that 's serious 
enough to cause your return to London. 

For a few minutes Mac continued looking over 
the parapet. Without turning his head, he said 
to me : "I '11 gie ye five poond, if ye '11 shoot me 
through the airm or the fut." When a Scotch- 
man who is getting only a shilling a day offers 
you five pounds, it is for something very desir- 

53 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

able. Before I had a chance to take him up on 
this handsome offer, my attention was attracted 
by the appearance of a light just a little in front 
of where Mac had said the enemy trench was 
located. I gi-abbed my gun excitedly. 

" Dinna fire, lad," cautioned Mac. " We have 
a wurrkin' pairty oot just in front. Ye would na 
hit anything if ye did. 'T is only wastin' bul- 
lets to fire at night." 

For almost an hour I continued to watch the 
light as it moved about. It was a party of 
Turks, Mac explained, seeking their dead for 
burial, \yhen I was relieved for a couple of 
hours' sleep they were still there. 

Just where I was posted, the trench was trav- 
ersed ; that is, from the parapet there ran at right 
angles, for about six feet, a barricade of sand- 
bags, that formed the upright line of a figure T. 
The angle made by this traverse gave some pro- 
tection from the wind that swept through the 
trench. Here I spread my blanket. The night 
was bitterly cold, and I shivered for lack of an 
overcoat. In coming away hurriedly from Lon- 
don, I did not take an overcoat with me. In 
Egypt, it had never occurred to me that I should 
need one in Gallipoli ; and the chance to get one 

54 



THERE 

I had lost. But I was too weary to let even the 
cold keep me awake. In a few minutes I was 
as sound asleep as if I had been far from all 
thought of war or trenches. 

It seemed to me that I had just got to sleep 
when I was awakened by a hand shaking my 
shoulder roughly, and by a voice shouting, 
" Stand to, laddie." It was Mac. I jumped to 
my feet, rubbing my eyes. 

" What 's the matter? " I asked. 

" Nothing 's the matter," said Mac. " Every 
morning at daybreak ye stand to airms for an 
hour." 

I looked along the trench. Every man stood 
on the firing platform with his bayonet fixed. 
Daybreak and just about sunset are the times 
attacks are most likely to take place. At those 
times the greatest precautions are taken. Dawn 
was just purpling the range of hills directly in 
front when word came, " Day duties commence." 
Periscopes were served out, and placed about 
ten feet apart along the trench. These are plain 
oblong tubes of tin, three by six inches, about 
two feet high. They contain an arrangement of 
double mirrors, one at the top, and one at the 
bottom. The top mirror slants backward, and 

55 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

reflects objects in front of it. The one at the 
bottom slants forward, and reflects the image 
caught by the top mirror. In the daytime, by 
using a periscope, a sentry can keep his head be- 
low the top of the parapet, while he watches the 
ground in front. Sometimes, however, a bullet 
strikes one of the mirrors, and the splintered 
glass blinds the sentry. It is not an uncommon 
thing to see a man go to the hospital with his face 
badly lacerated by periscope glass. 

During the daytime, the men who were not 
watching worked at different " fatigues." Para- 
pets had to be fixed up, trenches deepened, drains 
and dumps dug, and bomb-proof shelters had to 
be constructed for the officers. Every few min- 
utes the Turkish batteries opened fire on us, but 
with very poor success. The navy and our land 
batteries replied, with what effect we could not 
tell. Once or twice I put my head up higher 
than the parapet. Each time I did, I heard the 
ping of a bullet, as it whizzed past my ear. Once 
a sniper put five at me in rapid succession. 
Every one was within a few inches of me, but 
fortunately on the outside of the parapet. Just 
before landing in Egypt, we had been served out 
with large white helmets to protect us from the 

56 



THERE 

tun. It did not take us very long to discover 
that on the Peninsula of Gallipoli these were 
veritable death traps. Against the landscape 
they loomed as large as tents ; they were simply 
invitations to the enemy snipers. We soon dis- 
carded them for our service caps. The hot sun 
of a Turkish summer bored down on us, adding 
to the torment of parched throats and tongues. 
We were suffering very much from lack of water. 
The first night we went into the firing line we 
were issued about a pint of water for each man. 
It was a week before we got a fresh supply. We 
had not yet had time to get properly organized, 
and our only food was hard biscuits, apricot jam, 
and bully beef; a pretty good ration under 
ordinary conditions, but, without water, most un- 
palatable. The flies, too, bothered us inces- 
santly. As soon as a man spread some jam on 
his biscuits, the flies swarmed upon it, and be- 
fore he could get it to his mouth it was black 
with the pests. 

These were not the only drawbacks. Directly 
in front of our trenches lay a lot of corpses, 
Turks who had been killed in the last attack. 
In front of the line of about two hundred yards 
held by B Company there were six or seven hun- 

59 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

dred of them. We could not get out to bury 
them, nor could we afford to allow the enemy to 
do so. There they stayed, and some of the hordes 
of flies that continually hovered about them, with 
every change of wind, swept down into our 
trenches, carrying to our food the germs of dys- 
entery, enteric, and all the foul diseases that 
threaten men in the tropics. 

After two days of this life, we were relieved 
and moved back about two miles to the reserve 
dugouts for a rest, to get something to eat, and 
depopulate our underwear; for the trenches 
where we slept harbored not only rats but ver- 
min and all manner of things foul. 

The regiment that relieved us was an English 
regiment, the Essex. They were some of 
" Kitchener's Army." We stood down off the 
parapet, and the Englishmen took our places. 
Then with our entire equipment on our backs 
we started our hegira. We had about four 
miles to go, two down through the front line 
trenches, then two more through winding, nar- 
row communication trenches, almost to the edge 
of the Salt Lake. Here in the partial shelter 
afforded by a small hill were our dugouts. In 
Gallipoli there was no attempt at the ambitious 

60 



THERE 

dugout one hears of on the Western front. Our 
dugouts resembled more nearly than anything 
else newly made graves. Usually one sought a 
large rock and made a dugout at the foot of it. 
The soil of the Peninsula lent itself readily to 
dugout construction. It is a moist, spongy clay, 
of the consistency of thick mortar. A pickax 
turns up large chunks of it; these are placed 
around the sides. A few hours' sun dries out 
the moisture, and leaves them as hard and solid 
as concrete. 

While we had been in the firing line, another 
regiment had made some dugouts. There were 
four rows of them, one for each company, B 
Company's were nearest the beach. We filed 
slowly down the line, until we came to the end. 
A dugout was assigned to every two men. I 
shared one with a chap named Stenlake. We 
spread our blankets, put our packs under our 
heads, and for the first time for a week, took off 
our boots. Before going to sleep, Stenlake and I 
chatted for a while. When war broke out, he 
told me, he had been a missionary in Newfound- 
land. He offered as chaplain, and was accepted 
and given a commission as captain. Later some 
difficulty arose. The regiment was made up of 

61 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

three or four different denomiuations, about 
equally divided. Each one Avanted its own chap- 
lain, which was expensive; so they decided to 
have no chaplain. Stenlake immediately re- 
signed his commission, and enlisted as a private. 
Our whisperings were interrupted by a voice 
from the next dugout. "^ You had better get to 
sleep as soon as you can, boys; you have a hard 
day before you, to-morrow." It was Mr. Nuuns, 
the lieutenant in command of our platoon. 
Casting aside all caste prejudice, he was sleep- 
ing in the midst of his men, in the first dug- 
out he had found empty. He could have detailed 
some men to build him an elaborate dugout, but 
he preferred to be with his " boys." The Eng- 
lish oflicers of the old school claim that this sort 
of thing hurts discipline. If they had seen the 
prompt and cheerful way in which No. 8 platoon 
obeyed Mr. Nunns' orders, they would have been 
enliirhteued. 



62 



CHAPTER III 

TRENCHES 

SOMEBODY has said that a change of occu- 
pation is a rest. Whoever sent us into 
dugouts for a rest, evidently had this definition 
in mind. After breakfast the first morning we 
were ordered out for digging fatigue just behind 
the firing line. In this there was one consola- 
tion. We did not have to carry our packs. 
Each man took his rifle and either a pick or a 
shovel. Communication trenches had to be dug 
to avoid long tramps through the firing line ; and 
connecting trenches had to be made between the 
existing communication trenches. While we 
were in dugouts we had eight hours of this work 
out of every twenty-four ; four hours in the day- 
time and four at night. 

The second day in dugouts when we came back 
from our morning's digging, we found some new 
arrivals making some dugouts about two hun- 

63 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

dred yards behind our lines. They were Terri 
torials, who correspond to the militia in the 
United States. " The London Terriers," they 
called themselves. Mostly they were young fel- 
lows from eighteen to twenty-two years old. 
They had landed only that morning and were in 
splendid condition, and very eager for the com- 
ing of evening when they were to go to the fir- 
ing line. The ground they had selected was 
sheltered from observation by the little ridge near 
our line of dugouts; but some of our men in mov- 
ing about attracted the attention of the Turkish 
artillery observer. Instantly half a dozen shells 
came over the ridge, past our lino, and bang! 
right in the midst of the Londons, working fear- 
ful destruction. Every ten or fifteen minutes 
after that, the Turks sent over some shells. 
Some regiments are lucky, others seem to walk 
into destruction everywhere they turn. The 
shells fired at the Newfoundlanders landed in the 
Londons. About two minutes' walk from our 
dugouts our cooks had built a fire and were pre- 
paring meals. A number of our men passed 
continually between our line and the cooks'. 
Not one of them was even scratched. The only 
two of the Londons who ventured there were 

64 



TRENCHES 

hit; one fellow was killed instantly, the other, 
seriously wounded through the lungs, lay moan- 
ing where he had fallen. It was just dusk, and 
nobody knew he had been hit until one of our 
men, coming down, heard his hoarse whispering 
request to " get a doctor, for God's sake get a 
doctor." While somebody ran for the doctor, 
our stretcher bearers responded to the all too fa- 
miliar shout, " Stretcher bearers at the double," 
but by the time they reached him he was beyond 
all need of doctor or stretcher bearers. Before 
the London Terriers even saw the firing line, 
they lost over two hundred men. They simply 
could not escape the Turkish shells. The enemy 
had a habit of sending over one shell, then wait- 
ing just a minute or less, and following it with 
another. The first shell generally wounded two 
or three men; the second one was sent over to 
catch the stretcher bearers and the comrades 
who hastened to aid those who were hit. Be- 
fore they had completed their dugouts, the shrap- 
nel caught them in the open; after they were 
dug in, it buried them alive. Never did a regi- 
ment leave dugouts with so much joy as did the 
London Terriers when they entered the trenches 
for the first time. Ordinarily a man is much 

65 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

safer in the tiring line than in rest dugouts. 
Trenches are so constructed that even when a 
shell drops right in the traverse where men are, 
only half a dozen or so suffer. In open or 
slightly protected ground where the dugouts are, 
the burst of a shrapnel shell covers an area 
twenty-five by two hundred yards in extent. 

A shell can be heard coming. Experts claim 
to identify the caliber of a gun by the sound the 
shell makes. Few live long enough to become 
such experts. In Gallipoli the average length of 
life was three weeks. In dugouts we always ate 
our meals, such as they were, to the accompani- 
ment of " Turkish Delight," the Newfound- 
landers' name for shrapnel. We had become ac- 
customed to rifle bullets. When you hear the 
zing of a spent bullet or the sharp crack of an 
explosive, you know it has passed you. The one 
that hits you, you never hear. At tirst we 
dodged at the sound of a passing bullet, but soon 
we came actually to believe the superstition that 
a bullet would not hit a man unless it had on 
it his regimental number and his name. Then, 
too, a bullet leaves a clean wound, and a man 
hit by it drops out quietly. The shrapnel makes 
nasty, jagged, hideous wounds, the horrible recol- 

66 



3 ~ 



3 5 




TRENCHES 

lection of which lingers for days in the minds 
of those who see them. It is little wonder that 
we preferred the firing line. 

Every afternoon from just behind our line of 
dugouts an aeroplane buzzed up. At the tre- 
mendous height it looked like an immense blue- 
bottle fly. We always knew when it was two 
o'clock. Promptly at that hour every afternoon 
it winged its way over us and beyond to the 
Turkish trenches. At first the enemy's aero- 
planes came out to meet ours, but a few en- 
counters with our men soon convinced them of 
the futility of such attempts. After that, they 
relied on their artillery. In the air all around 
the tiny speck we could see white puffs of smoke 
that showed where their shrapnel was explod- 
ing. Sometimes those puffs were perilously 
close to it ; at such times our hearts were in our 
mouths. Everybody in the trench craned his 
neck to see. When our aeroplane manoeuvered 
clear, you could hear a sigh of relief from every 
man. 

After about the eighth day in dugouts we were 
ordered back to the firing line. We had to take 
over a part of the trench near Anafarta Village. 
In this vicinity the Fifth Norfolks, a company 

69 



TRENCHIlNiG AT GALLIPOLI 

formed of men from the King's estate at Sand- 
ringham, had charged into the woods, about two 
hundred and fifty strong, and had been com- 
pletely lost sight of. This was the most com- 
fortable trench we had yet been in. It had been 
taken over from the Turks, and when we faced 
toward them we had to build another firing plat- 
form. This left their firing platform for us to 
sleep on. After the cramped, narrow trenches 
of the first couple of weeks, this roomy trench 
was very pleasant. On both sides of the trench 
were some trees that threw a grateful shade in 
the daytime. Along the edge grew little bushes 
that bore luscious blackberries, but to attempt to 
get them was courting death. Nevertheless, the 
Newfoundlanders secured a good many. Best 
of all though was the " Block House Well." Fop 
the first time we had a ph'uitude of water. But 
by this time conditions had begun to tell on the 
men. Each morning more and more men re- 
ported for sick parade. They were beginning to 
feel the enervating effect of the climate, and of 
the lack of water and proper food. While we 
were intrenched near the block house, the men 
were sickening so fast that in our platoon we 
had not enough men to form the sentry groups. 

70 



TRENCHES 

The noncommissioned officers had to take their 
place on the parapet, and the ordinary work of 
the noncoms, changing sentries, waking reliefs, 
and detailing working parties had to be done 
by the commissioned officers. Just about an 
hour before my turn to watch, I was suddenly 
stricken by the fever that lurks on the Peninsula. 
In the army, no man is sick unless so pronounced 
by the medical officer. Each morning at nine 
there is a sick parade. A man taken ill after 
that has to wait until the next morning, and is 
officially fit for duty. My turn came at eleven 
o'clock at night. The man I was to relieve was 
Frank Lind. He went on at nine. When eleven 
o'clock came, I was burning up with fever. Lind 
w^ould not hear of my being roused to relieve him, 
but continued on the parapet until one o'clock, 
although in that part of the trench snipers had 
been doing a lot of execution. Then he rested 
for a couple of hours and at three o'clock re- 
sumed his place on the parapet for the remainder 
of the night. At daybreak he was still there. I 
slept all through the night, exhausted by the 
fever, and it was not till a few days after that 
some one else told me what Lind had done. 
From him I heard no mention of it. Whenever 

71 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

somebody says that war serves only to bring out 
the worst in a man I think of Frank Lind. The 
fever that had weakened me so, continued all 
that day. I reported for sick parade and was 
given a day off duty. The next day I was given 
light duty, and the following day the fever left 
me and that night I was fit for duty again, and 
was sent out to a detached post about halfway 
between us and the enemy. The detached post 
was an abandoned house about twenty feet 
square. All the doors and windows had been 
torn out, and now it was nothing but the merest 
skeleton of a house. We had been there about 
three hours when there occurred something most 
extraordinary and unaccountable. It was a 
pitch dark night, and working parties were out 
from both sides. Ordinarily there would have 
been no firing. Suddenly from away on the 
right where the Australians were, began the 
sharp crackling of rapid fire. A boy pulling a 
wooden stick along an iron park railing makes 
almost the same sound. The crackling swept 
down the line right past the trench directly be- 
hind us and away on to the left. The Turks, 
fearing an attack, replied. Between the two 

72 



TRENCHES 

fires we were caught. There were eight of us 
in the blockhouse. Only two of us came from 
No. 8 platoon, Art Pratt, my sandy -haired friend 
of Aldershot days, and I. The sergeant in 
charge was from another platoon. When the 
rapid fire began, he became melodramatic. He 
had the responsibility of seven other men's lives, 
and the thing that seemed rather comic to us was 
probably very serious to him. There was noth- 
ing the matter, though, with the way in which he 
handled the situation. There were eight open- 
ings in the house for the missing doors and win- 
dows. At each window he placed a man, and 
stood at the door himself, then ordered us to fill 
our magazines and fix our bayonets. But psy- 
chologically he made a mistake. He turned to 
me and said, 

" Corporal, we 're in a pretty tight place. We 
may have to sell our lives dearly. I want every 
man to stand by me. Will you stand by me? " 

When the thing had started I had just expe- 
rienced a pleasant tingle of excitement, but at 
this view of the situation I felt a little serious. 
Before I had a chance to reply Art Pratt relieved 
the situation by shouting, 

73 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" Did you say stand by you ? I '11 stand by 
this window and 1 11 bayonet the first damn Turk 
I see." 

There was a general laugh and the moment of 
tension passed. In a few minutes the exchange 
of rapid fire died down as suddenly as it had 
started. The rest of the night passed unevent- 
fully. Just before daybreak we returned to our 
platoons. 

We never found out the reason for the sudden 
exchange of rapid fire. Some Australians away 
on the right had started it. Everybody had 
joined in, as the firing ran along the line of 
trenches. As soon as the officers began an in- 
vestigation it was stopped. 

It seems to me that most of the time we were 
in the blockhouse trench w^e spent our nights out 
between the lines. Most of our work was done at 
night. When we wished to advance our line, we 
sent forward a platoon of men the desired dis- 
tance. Every man carried with him three empty 
sandbags and his intrenching tool. Temporary 
protection is secured at short notice by having 
every man dig a hole iu the ground that is large 
and deep enough to allow him to lie flat in it. 
The intrenching tool is a miniature pickax, one 

74 



TRENCHES 

end of which resembles a large bladed hoe with 
a sharpened and tempered edge. The pick end 
is used to loosen hard material and to break up 
large lumps; the other end is used as a shovel 
to throw up the dirt. When used in this fash- 
ion the wooden handle is laid aside, the pick end 
becomes a handle, and the intrenching tool is 
used in the same manner as a trowel. The whole 
instrument is not over a foot long, and is car- 
ried in the equipment. 

Lying on our stomachs, our rifles close at hand, 
Ave dug furiously. First we loosened up enough 
earth in front of our heads to fill a sandbag. 
This sandbag we placed beside our heads on the 
side nearest the enemy. Out in no man's land 
with bullets from rifle and machine guns patter- 
ing about us, we did fast work. As soon as we 
had filled the second and third sandbags we 
placed them on top of the first. In Gallipoli 
every other military necessity was subordinated 
to concealment. Often we could complete a 
trench and occupy it before the enemy knew of 
it. In the daytime our aeroplanes kept their 
aerial observers from coming out to find any 
work we had done during the night. Sometimes 
while we were digging, the Turks surprised us 

75 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

by sending up star shells. They burst like 
rockets high overhead. Everything was out- 
lined in a strange, uncanny light that gave the 
effect of stage fire. At first, when a man saw a 
star shell, he dropped flat on his face ; but after a 
good many men had been riddled by bullets, we 
saw our mistake. The sudden, blinding glare 
makes it impossible to identify objects before the 
light fades. Star shells show only movement. 
The first stir between the lines becomes the tar- 
get for both sides. So, after that, even when a 
man was standing upright, he simply stood still. 
After the block-house trench, our next move 
was to a part of the firing line that I have never 
been able to identify. It was very close to the 
Turks, and in this spot we lost a large number 
of men. From one point, a narrow sap or rough 
trench ran out at right angles very close to the 
Turkish position. It may have been twenty-five 
or thirty yards away. To hold this sap was 
very important ; if the Turks took it, it gave them 
a commanding position. About twenty men 
were in it all the time, four or five of them bomb 
throwers. The men holding this sap at the time 
we were there were the Irish, the Dublin Fusi- 

76 



TRENCHES 

liers or, as we knew tliem, the Dubs. The Turks 
made several attempts to take it, but were re- 
pulsed. When our men were not on sentry duty, 
several of them spent their rest hours out in this 
sap, talking to the Dubs. The Dubs were inter- 
esting talkers. They had been in the thing from 
the beginning, and spoke of the landings with 
laughter and a fierce joy of slaughter. 
Most of them had been on the Western front 
before coming to Gallipoli. From the Turkish 
trenches directly in front of this sap, the enemy 
signaled the effect of our shots. They used the 
same signals that we used in target practice, 
waving a stick back and forth to indicate outers, 
inners, magpies, and bull's-eyes. Whoever did 
it, had a sense of humor ; because as soon as he 
became tired, he took down the stick for an in- 
stant, then raised it again and waved it back 
and forth derisively, with a large red German 
sausage on the end of it. This did not seem to 
bear out very well the tales that the enemy was 
slowly starving to death. Prisoners who sur- 
rendered from time to time told us that at any 
moment the entire Turkish army might surren- 
der, as they were very short of food. One thing 

79 



TREXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

we did know: the Turks felt the lack of shoes; 
out between the lines we found numbers of our 
dead with the boots cut off. 

While we were in this place the Turks dug to 
within ten or twelve yards of us before they were 
discovered. One of the Dublins saw them first. 
He seized some bombs, and jumped out, shout- 
ing, " Look at Johnny Turrk. Let 's bomb him 
to hell out of it." But Johnny Turk was obsti- 
nate; he stayed where he was in spite of our 
bombs. One of our fellows, the big chap whom I 
had heard at Aldershot complaining about being 
asked for his name and number, had crawled into 
the sap. He made his way through the smoke 
and dirt to the end of the sap where only a few 
yards separated him from the Turks. In one 
item of armament the British beat the Turks. 
We use bombs that explode three seconds after 
they are thrown; the Turks' don't explode for 
five seconds. The difference of only two seconds 
seems slight, but that day in the sap-head it was 
of great importance. For a short while the sup- 
ply of bombs for our side ran out. The man who 
was trying to get the cover off a box of them 
found difl&culty in doing it. The men in the sap- 
head were without bombs. Meanwhile the Turks 

80 



TRENCHES 

kept up an uninterrupted throwing of bombs. 
Most of them landed in the sap. The big New- 
foundlander who had crawled out looking for 
excitement found it. As soon as the supply of 
bombs ran out, instead of getting back into 
safety, he stood his ground. The first bomb that 
came over dropped close to him. He was swear- 
ing softly, and his face was glowing with pleas- 
ure. He bent down coolly, picked up the bomb 
and threw it back over the parapet at the Turks 
who had sent it. With our bombs he could not 
have done it, but the extra two seconds were just 
enough. Five or six of the bombs came in and 
were treated in the same way, before our supply 
was resumed. A brigade officer, who had come 
out into the sap, stood gazing awe-struck at the 
big Newfoundlander. Open-mouthed, with mon- 
ocle in hand, the officer was the picture of amaze- 
ment. At last he spoke, with that slow, imper- 
sonal English drawl : 

" I say, my man, what is your name and num- 
ber." 

The look on the Newfoundlander's face was a 
study. He knew he should not have come out 
into that sap, and every time that question had 
been shot at him before it had meant a repri- 

81 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

mand. At last he shrugged his shoulders, then 
with a resigned expression, answered the officer 
in a fashion not entirely confined to Newfound- 
landers — by asking a question : " What in hell 
have I done now? " 

Without a word the officer turned on his heel 
and left the sap. The big fellow waited until 
he felt the officer was well out of sight, then de- 
parted for his proper place in the trench. One 
of the Dubs looking after him, said to me: 

" There 's a man that would have been recom- 
mended for a Distinguished Conduct Medal if 
he 'd answered that officer right." 

That Irishman was a man of wide experience. 

" I 've been seventeen years in the army, and 
I 've been in every war that England fought in 
that time," said he, " and I '11 tell you now, the 
real Distinguished Conduct Medal men and the 
real V. C. heroes never get them. They 're under 
the ground." Coming from the man it did, this 
expression of opinion was interesting, for he was 
Cooke, the man who had been given a Distin- 
guished Conduct Medal for his work on the West- 
ern front. Since coming to the Peninsula he 
had been acting as a sharpshooter, and had been 
recommended for the V. C, the Victoria Cross, 

82 



TRENCHES 

which is the highest reward for valor in the Brit- 
ish army. He was only waiting then, for word 
to go to London, to get the cross pinned on by 
the King. 

" There 's one man on this Peninsula," contin- 
ued Cooke, " who 's won the V. C. fifty times 
over ; that 's the donkey -man," 

The man Cooke meant was an Australian, a 
stretcher-bearer. His real name was Simpson, 
but nobody ever called him that. Because he 
was of Irish descent, the Australians, who dearly 
love nicknames, called him Murphy, or, Moriarty, 
or Dooley, or whatever Irish name first occurred 
to them. More generally, though, he was called 
the Man with the Donkey, and by this name he 
was known all over the Peninsula. In the early 
days, the Anzacs had captured some booty from 
the Turks and in it were some donkeys. It was 
in the strenuous time when men lay in all sorts 
of inaccessible places, dying and sorely wounded, 
Simpson in those days seemed everywhere. As 
soon as he heard of the capture he went down, 
looked appraisingly over the donkeys, and com- 
mandeered two of them. On one donkey he 
painted F. A. No. 1, and on the other, F. A. No. 
2 ; F. A. being his abbreviation for Field Ambu- 

83 



TKENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

lance. Day and night after that Simpson could 
be seen going about among the wounded, here giv- 
ing a man first aid, there loosening the equip- 
ment and making easier the last few minutes for 
some poor fellow too far gone to need any medical 
care. The wounded men who could not walk or 
limp down to the dressing station he carried 
down, one on each of the donkeys and one on his 
back or in his arms. He talked to the donkeys as 
they plodded slowly along, in a strange mixture 
of English, xirabic profanity, and Australian 
slang. Many an Australian or New Zealander 
who has never heard of Simpson remembers 
gratefully the attentions of a strangely gentle 
man who drove before him two small gray don- 
keys each of which carried a wounded soldier. 
In Australia long after this war is over men will 
thrill at the mention of the Man with the Don- 
key. I agreed with Cooke that this man had won 
the V. C. fifty times over. 

Cooke was going out that night, he told me, 
to stay for three or four days, sniping, between 
the lines. As soon as he came back he expected 
to go to London. 

" Before I go out," he said, " I '11 show you a 
84 



TRENCHES 

good place where you can get a shot at Abdul 
Pasha." . 

I followed Cooke out through the sap and up 
the trench a little way to where it turned sharply 
to avoid a large boulder. Just in front of this 
boulder was some short, prickly underbrush. 
Cooke parted the bushes cautiously with his 
hand, and motioned me to come closer. I did 
and through the opening he pointed out the en- 
emy trench about four hundred yards away, and 
about thirty yards in front of it a little clump of 
bushes. 

" Just in front of those bushes," said Cooke, 
" there 's a sniper's dugout. Keep your eyes 
open to-morrow and you ought to get some of 
them." 

I noted the place for the next day, and walked 
down to the sap with Cooke. There I shook 
hands with him, wished him good luck, and re- 
turned to my platoon. 

That night I had to go out on listening patrol 
between the lines. At one o'clock my turn came. 
An Irish sergeant came along the trench for me 
to guide me out to the listening post. I went 
with him a short distance along the trench, 

85 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

picked up four others, tbeu with a shoulder from 
a comrade, we got over the parapet. The listen- 
ing post was about a hundred yards away. We 
had gone only a few yards when we heard firing 
coming from that direction, first one shot fol- 
lowed by twenty or thirty in quick succession, 
then silence. A man stumbled out of the dark- 
ness immediately in front of us. lie was pant- 
ing and excited. It was a messenger from the 
corporal that we were going to relieve. He had 
been walking along without the least suspicion 
of danger when he had run full tilt into a party 
of fifteen or sixteen of the enemy. He had 
dropped down immediately and yelled to one of 
his men to go back to the trench with word. We 
followed the panting messenger to the post. The 
enemy had now disappeared. We opened rapid 
fire in the direction in which they had gone. 
Evidently it was right, for in a few seconds they 
returned it, wounding one man. For about five 
minutes we kept up firing, with what success we 
could not tell, but at any rate we had the satis- 
faction of driving off a superior force. Those 
two hours straining through the darkness were 
not particularly pleasant. I did not know what 
moment or from what direction the enemy might 

S6 



TRENCHES 

come, and I knew that if he did come it would be 
in force. Apparently the whole thing was un- 
planned, because during the remainder of my two 
hours, although I peered unceasingly in all direc- 
tions, I could see nothing, nor could I hear the 
slightest sound. Evidently Johnny Turk was 
willing to let well enough alone. That night 
when I returned to the trench I was told that the 
next night at dark we were to go into dugouts. 

Ordinarily the thought of dugouts was dis- 
tasteful, but it seemed years since I had taken 
my boots off. Our platoon had lost heavily, 
mostly from disease. All the novelty had worn 
off the trench life. Instead of six noncoms, there 
were only three. Each of us was doing the work 
of two men. Our ration had been the eternal 
bully beef, biscuit, and jam. Our cooks did their 
best to make it palatable by cooking the beef in 
stew with some desiccated vegetables, but these 
were hard and tasteless. Most of us had got to 
the stage where the very sight of jam made us 
sick. That night, looking down through the ra- 
vine, I saw, winking and blinking cheerfully, the 
only light that brightened the Stygian darkness, 
the Red Cross of the hospital ships. I have won- 
dered since if the entrance to heaven is illumi- 

87 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

nated with an electric Red Cross. There was not 
a man in the whole battalion w^ho was really fit. 
Most of them had had a touch of one or more of 
the prevalent diseases. 

Stenlake, the young clergyman, who had been 
my dugout mate, was scarcely able to drag him- 
self about the trench. And by this time we had 
the weather to contend with. It was nearing 
the middle of October, and the rainy season 
was almost upon us. Occasionally the sky dark- 
ened up to a heavy grayness that seemed to cover 
everything as with a pall. Following this came 
heavy, sudden squalls that swept through the 
trenches, drenching everything, and tearing 
blankets and equipments with them. Although 
the sun still continued to bore down unremit- 
tingly in the daytime, the nights had become bit- 
terly cold, and to the tropical diseases were 
added rheumatism and pneumonia. On the men 
from Newfoundland the climate was especially 
telling. We had ceased to wonder at the crowd 
of men who reported sick each morning, and 
simply marveled that the number was not 
greater. 

All over the Peninsula disease had become 
epidemic until the clearing stations and the 

88 



TRENCHES 

beaches were choked with sick. The time we 
should have been sleeping was spent in digging, 
but still the men worked uncomplainingly. 
Some, too game to quit, would not report to the 
doctor, working on courageously until they 
dropped, although down in the bay beckoned the 
Eed Cross of the hospital ship, with its assurance 
of cleanliness, rest, and safety. By sickness and 
snipers' bullets we were losing thirty men a day. 
Nobody in the front line trenches or on the shell- 
swept area behind ever expected to leave the 
Peninsula alive. Their one hope was to get off 
wounded. Every night men leaving the trenches 
to bring up rations from the beach shook hands 
with their comrades. From every ration party 
of twenty men we always counted on losing two. 
Those who were wounded were looked on as 
lucky. The best thing we could wish a man was 
a " cushy wound," one that would not prove fatal, 
or a " Blighty one." But no one wanted to quit. 
Men hung on till the last minute. Often it was 
not till a man dropped exhausted that we learned 
from his comrades that he had not eaten for 
days. The only men in my platoon w^ho seemed 
to be nearly fit were Art Pratt, and a young chap 
named Hayes. Art seemed to be enjoying the 

89 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

life thoroughly. He went about the trench, 
cheerfully, grinning and whistling, putting heart 
into the others. Whenever there was any spe- 
cially dangerous work to be done. Art always vol- 
unteered. He spent more time out between the 
lines than in the trench. AVhenever a specially 
reliable, cool man was needed, Art was selected. 
Young Hayes was a small chap who had been in 
my platoon at Stob's Camp in Scotland. He had 
made a record for being absent from parade, and 
was always in trouble for minor offenses. I took 
him in hand and did my best to keep him out of 
trouble. Out in the trenches he remembered it, 
and followed me around like a shadow. When- 
ever I was sent in charge of a fatigue party he 
always volunteered. The men all did their best 
to make the work of the noncoms easy. As a 
stud}' in the effects of colonial discipline it would 
have been enlightening for some of the English 
officers. The men called their corporals and ser- 
geants, Jack, or Bill, or Mac, but there never 
was the slightest question about obeying an or- 
der. Everybody knew that everybody else was 
overworked and underfed, and every man tried 
to give as little trouble as possible. Such con- 
duct from the Newfoundlanders was astonishing, 

90 



TKENCHES 

as in training they simply loved to make trouble 
for the noncoms, and the most unenviable job in 
the regiment was that of corporal or sergeant. 
Such were the conditions the next afternoon 
when we moved from the firing trench to rest near 
some dugouts that had been forsaken by the 
Royal Scots. They had been relieved, some said, 
to go to the island of Imbros, about fifteen miles 
away, for a rest. At Imbros, rumor said, you 
could buy, in the canteen, eggs and butter, and 
other heavenly things that we had almost forgot- 
ten the taste of. At Imbros, too, you were free 
from shell fire, and drilled every day just as you 
did in training. It was whispered, too, but 
scornfully discredited, that Imbros boasted 
shower baths, and ovens for the disinfecting of 
clothing. Others claimed that the Royal Scots 
had been withdrawn from the Peninsula and 
were going to the Western front. They were the 
first regiment to leave of the Twenty-ninth Di- 
vision. The whole division was to be withdrawn 
gradually. The Twenty-ninth was our division, 
and we were to go with it to England. We were 
to winter in Scotland and after we had been 
recruited up to full strength were to go to France 
in the spring. An examination of the empty 

91 



TEEXCniNG AT GALLIPOLI 

dugouts strengthened this belief. Blankets, rub- 
ber sheets, belts, pieces of equipment, and even 
overcoats were lying around. In one of the dug- 
outs I found a copy of the Odyssey, and half a 
dozen other books. A few dugouts away I came 
upon one of our fellows gazing regretfully upon 
an empty whisky bottle. As I approached him, 
I overheard him murmur abstractedly, " My fa- 
vorite brand too, my favorite brand." I passed 
on without interrupting him. It was too sacred 
a moment. 



92 



CHAPTER IV 

DUGOUTS 

TIIE afternoon sun poured down steadily on 
little groups of men preparing dugouts for 
habitation. I had a good many details to attend 
to before I could look about for a suitable place 
for a dugout. Men had to be told off for differ- 
ent fatigues. Men for pick and shovel work 
that night were placed in sections so that each 
group would get as much sleep as possible. All 
the available dugouts had been taken up by the 
first comers. The location here was particu- 
larly well suited for dugouts. A mule path to 
the beach ran along the bottom of a narrow ra- 
vine. On one side of the path the ground 
shelved gradually up till it merged into a plain, 
covered with long grass, overgrown and neg- 
lected. On the other side, a ridge sloped up 
sharply and formed a natural protection before 
it also merged into a " gorse " covered plateau. 
Small evergreen bushes served the double pur- 
pose of hiding our movements from the enemy 

93 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

and affording some shade from the broiling sun. 
At the foot of the ridge we made our line of 
dugouts. The angle of the ridge was so steep 
that an enemy shell could not possibly drop on 
our dugouts. A little further away some of A 
Company's dugouts were in the danger zone. 
After much hunting, I found a likely looking 
place. It was about seven feet square, and where 
I planned to put the head of my dugout a large 
boulder squatted. It was so eminently suitable 
that I wondered that no one else had preempted 
it. I took off my equii)ment, threw my coat on 
the ground, and began digging. It was soft 
ground and gave easily. 

A short distance away, I could see Art Pratt, 
digging. He was finding it hard work to make 
any impression. He saw me, stopped to mop 
his brow, and grinned cheerfully. 

" You should take soft ground like this, Art," 
I yelled. 

" I *ve gone so far now," said Art, " that it 's 
too late to change," and we resumed our work. 

After a few more minutes' digging, my pick 
struck something that felt like the root of a tree, 
but I knew there was no tree on that God-for- 
saken spot large enough to send out big roots. 

94 




Vr'ashing day in war-time 



DUGOUTS 

I disentangled the pick and dug a little more, 
only to find the same obstruction, I took my 
small intrenching tool, scraped away the dirt I 
had dug, and began cleaning away near the base 
of a big boulder. There were no roots there, 
and gradually I worked away from it. I took 
my pick again, and at the first blow it stuck. 
Without trying to disengage it I began straining 
at it. In a few seconds it began to give, and I 
withdrew it. Clinging to it was part of a Turk- 
ish uniform, from which dangled and rattled the 
dried-up bones of a skeleton. Nauseated, I hur- 
riedly filled in the place, and threw myself on 
the ground, physically sick. While I was lying 
there one of our men came along, searching for 
a place to bestow himself. He gazed inquir- 
ingly at the ground I had just filled in. 

"Is there anybody here?" he asked me, in- 
dicating the place with a pick-ax. 

" Yes," I said, with feeling, " there is." 

" It looks to me," he said, " as if some one be- 
gan digging and then found a better place. If 
he don't come back soon I '11 take it." 

For about fifteen minutes he stood there, and 
I lay regarding him silently. At last he spoke 
again. 

97 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" I think I '11 go ahead," he said. " Possession 
is nine points of the law, and the fellow has n't 
been here to claim it." 

" I would n't if I were you," I said. " That 
fellow 's been there a hell of a long while." 

I left him there digging, and crawled away to 
a safe distance. In a few minutes he passed me. 

" Why did n't you tell me? " he demanded, re- 
proachfully. 

" Because half of the company saw me digging 
there and did n't tell me," I said. 

I was prospecting around for another place 
when Art Pratt hailed me. " Why don't you 
come with me," he said, " instead of digging an- 
other place? " 

I went to where he was and looked at the 
dugout. It wasn't very wide, and I said so. 
Together we began widening and deepening the 
dugout, until it was big enough for the two of 
us. It was grueling work, but by supper time 
it was done. The night before, a fatigue party 
had gone down to the beach and hauled up a big 
field kitchen. Our cooks had made some tea, 
and we had been issued some loaves of bread. 
Art unrolled a large piece of cloth, with all the 
pomp and ceremony of a man unveiling a monu- 

98 



DUGOUTS 

ment. He did it slowly and carefully. There 
was a glitter in his eyes that one associates with 
an artist exhibiting his masterpiece. He gave 
a triumphant switch to the last fold and held 
toward me a large piece of fresh juicy steak! 

" Beefsteak ! " I gasped. " Sacred beefsteak ! 
Where did you get it ? " 

Art leaned toward me mysteriously. " Of- 
ficers' mess/' he whispered. 

" I 've got salt and pepper/' I said, " but how 
are you going to cook it? " 

" I don't know/' said Art, " but I 'm going up 
to the field kitchen ; there 's some condensed milk 
that I may be able to get hold of to spread on our 
bread." 

While Art was gone, I strolled down the ra- 
vine a little way to where some of the Ebyal En- 
gineers were quartered. The Royal Engineers 
are the men who are looked on in training as a 
noncombatant force, with safe jobs. In war- 
time they do no fighting, but their safe jobs con- 
sist of such harmless work as fixing up barbed 
wire in front of the parapet and setting mines 
under the enemy's trenches. For a rest they are 
allowed to conduct parties to listening posts and 
to give the lines for advance saps. Sometimes 

99 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

they make loopholes in the parapet, or bolster 
up some redoubt that is being shelled to pieces. 
The Turks were sending over their compliments 
just as I came abreast of the Engineers" lines. 
One of the engineers was sifting some gravel 
when the first shell landed. He dropped the 
sieve, and turned a back somersault into some 
gorse-bushes just behind him. The sieve rolled 
down, swayed from side to side, and settled close 
to my head, in the depression where I was con- 
scientiously emulating an ostrich. I gathered 
it to my bosom tenderly and began crawling 
away. From behind a boulder I heard the engi- 
neer bemoaning to an officer the loss of his sieve, 
and he described in detail how a huge shell had 
blown it out of his hands. Joyfully I returned 
to Art with my prize. 

" What -s that for? " said Art. 

" Turn it upside down," I said, " and it 's a 
steak broiler." 

" Where did you get it? " said Art, 

I told him, and related how the engineer had 
explained it to his officer. 

Up at the field kitchen a group was standing 
around. 

" What 's the excitement ? " I asked Art. 
100 



DUGOUTS 

" Those fellows are a crowd of thieves," an- 
swered Art, virtuously. " They 're looking about 
to see what they can steal. I was up there a few 
minutes ago and saw a can of condensed milk 
lying on the shaft of the field kitchen. They 
were watching me too closely to give me a chance, 
but you might be able to get away with it." 

The two of us strolled up slowly to where Hebe 
Wheeler, the creative artist who did our cooking, 
was holding forth to a critical audience. 

" It ■ s all very well to talk about giving you 
things to eat, but I can't cook pancakes without 
baking powder. You can't get blood out of a 
turnip. I 'd give you the stuff if I got it to cook, 
but I don't get it, do I, Corporal? " said Hebe, ap- 
pealing to me. 

I moved over and stood with my back to the 
shaft on which rested the tin of condensed milk. 

" No, Hebe," I said, " you don't get the things ; 
and when you do get them, this crowd steals them 
on you." 

" By God," said Hebe, " that 's got to be put 
a stop to. I '11 report the next man I find steal- 
ing anything from the cookhouse." 

I put my hand cautiously behind my back, un- 
til I felt my fingers close on the tin of milk. 

101 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" You let me know, Hebe," I said, as I slipped the 
tin into the roomy pocket of my riding breeches, 
" and I '11 make out a crime sheet against the 
first man whose name you give." I stayed about 
ten minutes longer talking to Hebe, and then 
returned to my dugout. Art had finished broil- 
ing the piece of steak, and we began our supper. 
I put my hand in my breeches' pocket to get the 
milk. Instead of grasping the tin, my fingers 
closed on a sticky, gluey mass. The tin had been 
opened when I took it and I had it in my pocket 
upside down. About half of it had oozed over 
my pocket. Art was just pouring the remainder 
on some bread when some one lifted the rubber 
sheet and stuck his head into our dugout. It 
was the enraged Hebe Wheeler. As soon as he 
had missed his precious milk he had made a 
thorough investigation of all the dugouts. He 
looked at Art accusingly. 

" Come in, Hebe," I said pleasantly. " We 
don't see you very often." 

Hebe paid no attention to my invitation, but 
glared at Art. 

" I 've caught you with the goods on," he said. 
" Give me back that milk, or I '11 report you to 
the platoon officer." 

102 



DUGOUTS 

" You can report me to Lord Kitchener if you 
like," said Art, calmly, as he drained the can; 
" but this milk stays right here." 

Hebe disappeared, breathing vengeance. 

After supper that night a crowd sat around the 
dying embers of one of the fires. This was one 
of the first positions we had been in where there 
was cover sufficient to warrant fires being 
lighted. A mail had been distributed that day, 
and the men exchanged items of news and 
swapped gossip. There were men there from all 
parts of Newfoundland. They spoke in at least 
thirty different accents. Any one who made a 
study of it could tell easily from each man's ac- 
cent the district he came from. Much of the 
mail was intimate, and necessitated private peru- 
sal, but much more was of interest to others. 
It was interesting to hear a man yell to a friend 
who came from his same " bay " that another 
man had enlisted from Robinson's, making up 
eighteen of the nineteen men of fighting age in 
the place. Sometimes the news was that " Half 
has volunteered, and Hed was turned down by 
the doctor." 

This from some resident of the northern parts 
where the fog is not, and where aspirates are of 

103 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

little consequence. This news gives rise to the 
opinion that " that 's the hend o' Half." This 
with much discussion and ominous shaking of 
the head. Sometimes a friend of the absent 
" Half " would tell of Half's exploit of stealing 
a trolley from the Reid Newfoundland Railway 
Company and going twenty miles to see a girl. 
Sometimes the hero was a married man. Then 
it was opined that his conjugal relations were 
not happy, and the reason he enlisted was that 
" he had heard something." All these opinions 
and suggestions were voiced with that beautiful 
freedom from restraint so characteristic of the 
ordinary conversation of the members of our reg- 
iment. Much was made of the arrival of a mail. 
It did not happen often, and the letters that came 
were three or four months old. " As cold wa- 
ters to a thirsty soul," says Solomon, '' so is good 
news from a far country." The Newfoundland- 
ers in that barren, scorched country caught eag- 
erly at every shred of news from that distant 
Northern country that they loved enough to risk 
their lives for. With such a setting it is little 
wonder that the talk was much of home. Be- 
hind the persiflage of the talk there was a poign- 
ant longing for those dark, cool forests of pine 

104 



DUGOUTS 

where the caribou roam, and the broad-bosomed 
lakes and rivers that were the highways for the 
monsters of the Northern forests on their jour- 
ney to the mills. The lumbermen of Notre Dame 
Bay and Green Bay told fearsome and wondrous 
tales of driving and swamping, of teaming and 
landing, until one almost heard the blows of the 
ax, the " gee " and " haw " of the teamsters, and 
smelt the pungent odor of new-cut pine. The 
Reid Newfoundland Railway, the single narrow 
gage road that twists a picturesque trail across 
the Island, had given largely of its personnel to- 
ward the making of the regiment. Firemen and 
engineers, brakemen and conductors, talked 
reminiscently of forced runs to catch expresses 
with freight and accommodation trains. There 
is an interesting tale of two drivers who blew 
their whistles in the Morse code, and kept up 
communication with each other, until a girl 
learned the code and broke up the friendship. 
A steamship fireman contributed his quota with 
a story of laboring through mountainous seas 
against furious tides when the stokers' utmost 
efforts served only to keep steamers from losing 
w^ay. By comparison with the homeland, Tur- 
key suffered much; and the things they said 

105 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

about Gallipoli were lamentable. From the 
gloom on the other side of the fire a Yoice chanted 
softly, " It 's a long, long way to Tipperary, It 's 
a long way to go.'' Gradually all joined in. 
After Tipperary, came many marching songs. 
"Are we downhearted? NO," with every one 
booming out the " No." " Boys in Khaki, Boys 
in Blue," and at last their own song; to the tune 
of " There is a tavern in the town." 

And when those Newfouudlaiulers start to yell, start to yell, 
Oh, Kaiser Bill, you '11 wish you were iu hell, were in hell ; 
For they '11 hang you high to your Potsdam palace wall, 
You 're a damn poor Kaiser, after all. 

The singing died down slowly. The talk turned 
to the trenches and the chances of victory, and 
by degrees to personal impressions. 

" I 'd like to know," said one chap, " why we 
all enlisted." 

" When I enlisted," said a man with an 
accent reminiscent of the Placentia Bay, " I 
thought there 'd be lots of fun, but with weather 
like this, and nothing fit to eat, there 's not much 
poetry or romance in war any more." 

'^ Right for you, my son," said another ; " your 
King and Country need you, but the trouble is 
to make your King and Country feed you." 

106 



DUGOUTS 

" Don't you wish you were in London now, 
Gal ? " said one chap, turning to me. " You 'd 
have a nice bed to sleep in, and could eat any- 
where you liked." 

" Well," I said, " enough people tried to per- 
suade me to stop. One fellow told me that the 
more brains a man had, the farther away he was 
from the firing-line, lie 'd been to the front too. 
I think," I added, " that General Sherman had 
the right idea." 

" I wish you fellows would shut up and go to 
sleep," said a querulous voice from a nearby dug- 
out. 

" You don't know what you 're talking about. 
Gal; General Sherman was an optimist." 

" It does n't do any good to talk about it now," 
said Art Pratt, in a matter of fact voice. " Some 
of you enlisted so full of love of country that 
there was patriotism running down your chin, 
and some of you enlisted because you were dis- 
appointed in love, but the most of you enlisted 
for love of adventure, and you 're getting it." 

Again the querulous subterranean voice inter- 
rupted : " Go to sleep, you fellows — there 's 
none of you knows what you 're talking about. 
There 's only one reason any of us enlisted, and 

107 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

that 's pure, low down, unmitigated ignorance." 
Amid general laughter the class in applied psy- 
chology broke up, and distributed themselves in 
their various dugouts. 

Halfway down to my dugout, I was arrested 
by the sound of scuffling, much blowing and puff- 
ing, and finally the satisfied grunt that I knew 
proceeded from Hebe Wheeler. 

" I 've got a spy," he yelled. " Here 's a bloody 
Turk." 

" Turk nothing," said a disgusted voice. 
" Don't you know a man from your own com- 
pany? " 

Hebe relinquished his hold on his captive and 
subsided, grumbling. The other arose, shook 
himself, and went his way, voicing his opinion 
of people who built their dugouts flush with the 
ground. 

" What do you think of the news from the 
Western front? " said Art, when I located him. 

"What is it? "I asked. 

" The enemy are on the run at the Western 
front. The British have taken four lines of Ger- 
man trenches for a distance of over five miles in 
the vicinity of Loos. The bulletin board at 

108 



DUGOUTS 

Brigade headquarters says that they have cap- 
tured several large guns, a number of machine 
guns, and seventeen thousand unwounded 
prisoners. If they can keep this up long enough 
for the Turks to realize that it is hopeless to ex- 
pect any help from that quarter, Abdul Pasha 
will soon give in." 

We were talking about Abdul Pasha's sur- 
rendering when we dropped off to sleep. We 
must have been asleep about two hours when the 
insistent, crackling sound of rapid fire, momen- 
tarily increasing in volume, brought us to our 
feet. Away up on the right, where the Austra- 
lians were, the sky was a red glare from the flash- 
ing of many rifles. Against this, we could see 
the occasional flare of different colored rockets 
that gave the warships their signals for shelling. 
Very soon one of our ofiflcers appeared. 

" Stand to arms for the Newfoundlanders," he 
said. 

"What is it?" I asked. 

*' The Australians are advancing," he an- 
swered. " We '11 go up as reinforcements if 
we 're needed. Tell your men to put on their 
ammunition belts, and have their rifles ready. 

109 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

They need n't put on tlieir packs ; but keep them 
near them so that they can slij) them on if we 
get the order to move away." 

I went about among the men of my section, 
passing along the word. Everybody was tin- 
gling with excitement. Nobody knew just what 
was about to happen ; but every one thought that 
whatever it was it would prove interesting. For 
about half an hour the rapid fire kept up, then by 
degrees died down. 

"Did you see that last rocket?" said a man 
near me ; " that means they 've done it. A red 
rocket means that the na\'y is to fire, a green to 
continue firing, and a white one means that 
we 've won." 

In a few minutes Mr. Nunns walked toward 
us. " You can put your equipments off, and turn 
in again," he said, " nothing doing to-night." 

" What is all the excitement? " I asked. 

" Oh, it 's the Anzacs again," he said ; " when 
they heard of the advance at Loos, they went over 
across, and surprised the Turks. They 've taken 
two lines of trenches. They did it without any 
orders — just wanted to celebrate the good 
news." 

I was awakened the next morning by the sound 
110 



DUGOUTS 

of a whizz-bang flying over our dugout. Johnny 
Turk was sending us his best respects. I shook 
Art, who was sleeping heavily. 

" Get up, Art," I said. I might as well have 
spoken to a stone wall. I tried again. Putting 
my mouth to his ear, I shouted, " Stand to, Art. 
Stand to." 

Art turned over, sleeping. ^' I '11 stand three 
if you like, but don't disturb me," he muttered, 
and relapsed into coma. 

In a few minutes, two or three more shells 
came along. They were well over the ridge be- 
hind us, but were landing almost in the midst of 
another line of dugouts. I stood gazing at them 
for a little while. A man passed me running 
madly. " Come on," he gasped, " and yell for 
the stretcher." I followed him without further 
question. " It 's all right," he said, slowing up 
just before we came to the line of dugouts that 
had just been shelled. " They 've got him all 
right." We continued toward a group that 
crowded about a stretcher. A man was lying on 
it, with his head raised on a haversack. He 
rolled his eyes slowly and surveyed the group. 
" What the hell is the matter? " he said dazedly ; 
then felt himself over gingerly for wounds. Ap- 

111 



TEENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

parently he could find none. " What hit me? " 
he asked, appealing to a grinning Red Cross man. 

" Nothing," said the other, " except about a 
ton of earth. It 's a lucky thing some one saw 
you. That last shell buried you alive." 

The whistle of a coming shell dispersed the 
grinning spectators. I went back to my dugout, 
and found Art busily toasting some bread over 
the sieve that I had commandeered the day before. 

" What was the excitement? " he asked. 

" Charlie Renouf," I said, " was buried alive." 

" Heavens," said Art, " he 's the postman ; we 
can't afford to lose him. That reminds me that 
I 've got to write some letters." 

After we had finished breakfast, Art produced 
some writing paper aud an indelible pencil. I 
did not have any writing paper, but I contributed 
a supply of service postcards, that bear such 
meager information as " I am quite well," " I am 
sick," " I am wounded," " I am in hospital and 
doing well," " I am in hospital aud expect to be 
discharged soon," " I have not heard from you 
for a long time," " I have had no letter from you 

since ," " I have your letter of ," " I 

have received your parcel of ," and a space 

for the date and the signature. When a man 

112 




o 



DUGOUTS 

writes home from the front, he crosses out all 
but the sentences he wants read, puts in the date, 
and adds his signature. This is the ordinary 
means of communication. About once a week a 
man is allowed to write some letters; but these 
are censored by his platoon officer, who seals 
them, and signs his name as a record of their 
having been passed by him. Sometimes the cen- 
sor at the base opens a few of them. Perhaps 
once a fortnight a few privileged characters are 
given large blue envelopes, that have printed in 
the corner: 

Note. — 
Correspondence in this envelope need not be censored 

Regimentally. Tlae contents are liable to examination at 

the Base. 

The following Certificate must be signed by the writer : 
/ certlfi/ on my honour that the contents of this envelope 

refer to nothng but private and family matters. 

Signature 

(Name only) 

While we were writing, the orderly sergeant, 
that dread of loafers, who appoints all details 
for fatigue work, bore down upon our dugout. 
" Two men from you, Corporal Gallishaw," he 
said, " for bomb throwers. Give me their names 
as soon as you can. They 're for practice this 
afternoon." 

115 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" One here, right away," said Art, " and put 
Lew O'Dea dowu for the other." 

Lew O'Dea was a character. He was in the 
next dugout to me. The first day on the Penin- 
sula, his ritle had stuck full of sand, and some 
one had stolen his tin canteen for cooking food. 
He immediately formed himself into an anti- 
poverty society of one thereafter, and went 
around like a walking arsenal. I never saw him 
with fewer than three rifles, usually he carried 
half a dozen. He always kept two or three of 
them spotlessly clean; so that no matter when 
rifle inspection came, he always had at least one 
to show. He had been a little late in getting his 
rifle clean once and was determined not to be 
caught any more. His equipment always con- 
tained a varied assortment of canteens, seven or 
eight gas masks, and his dugout was luxurious 
with rubber sheets and blankets. '' I inherited 
them," he always answered, whenever anybody 
questioned him about them. With ammunition 
for his several rifles, when he started for the 
trenches in full marching order, he carried a load 
that a mule need by no means have been ashamed 
of. 

'' Do you want to go on bomb throwing detail 
116 



DUGOUTS 

this afternoon? " I called to O'Dea across the top 
of the dugout. 

" Sure," he answered ; " does a swim want to 
duck?" 

" Fine/' I said; " report here at two o'clock." 
At two o'clock, accompanied by an officer and 
a sergeant, we went down the road a little way 
to where some Australians were conducting a 
class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap 
from Sydney showed me the difference between 
bombs that you explode by lighting a match, 
bombs that are started by pulling out a plug, 
and the dinky little three-second " cricket balls " 
that explode by pressing a spring. I asked him 
about the attack the night before. He told me 
that they had been for some time waiting for 
a chance to make a local advance that would 
capture an important redoubt in the Turkish 
line. Every night at exactly nine o'clock, the 
Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part 
of the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For 
ten minutes they kept up heavy firing. Then, 
after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and 
suspended firing, they began a second illumina- 
tion and bombardment, commencing always at 
twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely 

117 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

at half past. After a little while, the enemy, 
knowing just the exact minute the bombardment 
was to begin, took the first beam of the search- 
light as a hint to clear out. But the night before, 
a crowd of eager Australians had crept softly 
along in the shadow made doubly dark by the 
glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance 
covered by the sound of the bombardment. As 
soon as the bombardment ceased and the search- 
light's beam was succeeded by darkness, they 
poured into the Turkish position. They had taken 
the astonished Turks completely by surprise. 

" We did n't expect to make the attack for an- 
other week," said the Australian ; " but as soon 
as our boys heard that we were winning in 
France, they thought they 'd better start some- 
thing. There has n't been any excitement over 
our way now for a long time," he said. " I 'm 
about fed up on this waiting around the 
trenches." He fingered one of the little cricket- 
ball bombs caressingly. " Think of it," he said ; 
" all you do is press that little spring, and three 
seconds after you 're a casualty." 

"Pressing that little spring," said I, "is my 
idea of nothing to do, unless you 're a particu- 
larly fast sprinter." 

118 



DUGOUTS 

" By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said 
the Australian, with a peculiar, excited glint in 
his eye, " that 's an inspiration." 

"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewil- 
derment. 

The Australian stretched himself on the 
ground beside me, resting his chin in his cupped 
hands. " When I w as in Sydney," he said 
slowly and thoughtfully, " I did a hundred yards 
in ten seconds easily. Now if I can get in a 
traverse that 's only eight or nine yards long, and 
press the spring of one of those little cricket 
balls, I ought to be able to get out on the other 
side of the traverse before it explodes." 

Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and 
I jumped up to go with them. " Don't forget to 
look for me if you 're over around the Fifteenth 
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for 
White George." 

" I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to 
join the others. 

We were about half way to our dugouts when 
we passed a string of our men carrying about 
twenty mail bags. It was the second instalment 
of a lot of mail that had been landed the day be- 
fore. We followed the sweating carriers up the 

119 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

road to the quarter-master sergeant's dugout, 
and waited around humbly while that autocrat 
leisurely sorted out the mail, making remarks 
about each letter and waiting after each remark 
for the applause he felt it deserved. With mad- 
dening deliberation he scanned each address. 
" Corporal W. P. Costello." '' He 's at the base," 
some one answered. Corporal Costello's letter 
was put aside. " Private George Butler." 
Private Butler, on the edge of the crowd, pushed 
and elbowed his way toward the quarter-master 
sergeant. " Here you are ; letter for Butler." 
The august Q. M. S. placed the letter beside his 
elbow. " Wait till the lot 's sorted, and you '11 
get them all together." Private Butler, with ill- 
restrained impatience, resumed his place on the 
outside. After the letters, the parcels had to be 
sorted. Some enterprising person at the base 
had opened a lot of them. One fellow received 
a large box of cigarettes that he would have en- 
joyed smoking if the man at the base had not 
seen them first. Art Pratt drew a lot of mail, 
including a parcel, intact except for the contents. 
A diligent search in a box a foot square failed to 
locate anything more than a pair of socks, which 
Art presented to me with his compliments. 

120 



DUGOUTS 

Some papers, two months old, with some casualty 
lists of the First Newfoundland Regiment, had 
no address; the wrapper had gone before, some- 
where between Newfoundland and the Darda- 
nelles. Everybody claimed the papers. Vari- 
ous proofs were offered to show the ownership. 
One fellow knew by the way they were rolled 
up that they were from his family. Another, 
more original than the rest, was certain they 
were his, because he had written for papers of 
those dates, in order to see the announcement 
of the casualty of a friend. It was pointed out 
derisively that a letter written after that cas- 
ualty had occurred would only then have reached 
Newfoundland; and to get a lot of papers in 
reply would be a physical impossibility. The 
claimant, in no wise abashed, suggested that lots 
be drawn. This was pooh-poohed. At last, to 
avoid discussion, the quarter-master sergeant 
took the papers himself, and put them in his 
greatcoat. " I '11 distribute them after I 've 
read them," he announced, and pulled the rubber 
sheet across the top of his dugout, as a delicate 
hint that the interview was finished. The crowd 
slowly melted away. I received one letter, and 
was sitting on the edge of my dugout reading it 

121 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

when one of our men passing along, yelled to 
me. " Hey," he said, " you come from the 
United States, don't you?" 

" Yes," I said ; " what do you want to know 
that for?" 

" I 've got something here," he said, stopping, 
" that comes from there too." He dived into his 
pocket, and produced a medley of articles. 
From these he selected a small paper-wrapped 
parcel. 

"What's that? "I said. 

" It 's chewing gum," he answered ; " real 
American chewing gum like the girls chew in 
the subway in New York." He unwrapped it, 
selected a piece, placed it in his mouth, and began 
chewing it with elaborated enjoyment. After a 
few minutes, he came nearer. " By golly," he 
said, with an exaggerated nasal drawl, " it 's 
good gum, I '11 soon begin to feel like a bloom- 
ing Yank. I 'm talking like a Yank already. 
Don't you wish you had some of this? " 

" I '11 make you a sporting offer," I answered. 
" I '11 fight you for the rest of what you 've got." 

" No, you won't," he answered nasally ; " it 's 
made me feel exactly like a Yank ; I 'm too proud 
to fight." 

122 



CHAPTER V 

WAITING FOR THE WAR TO CEASE 

WE were still in dugouts when Art Pratt 
woke me one morning with a vicious kick, 
to show me my boots lying outside of the dugout, 
filled with rain water. All the night before it 
had poured steadily, but now it was clearing 
nicely. The Island of Imbros, fifteen miles 
away, that seemed to draw a great deal nearer 
before every rainstorm, had retreated to its nor- 
mal position. The sky was still gray, but it was 
the leaden gray of a Turkish autumn day. From 
Suvla Bay the wind blew keen and piercing, I 
salved the boots from the rain puddle, emptied 
them, dried them out as best I could with my 
puttees, and put them on. Art, in his own 
inimitable way, said unprintable things about a 
rifle that had been left outside, and that now 
necessitated laborious cleaning, in time for rifle 
inspection. All through breakfast. Lew O'Dea 
elaborated on the much-quoted remarks of the 

123 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

Governor of North Carolina to the Governor of 
South Carolina. Rum had not been issued as 
per schedule the evening before. Art began a 
maliciously fabricated story of a conversation he 
had heard in which a senior officer had stated 
that now that the cold weather had come, there 
would be no more rum. Just then, some one 
shouted, to " Look up in the sky." From the 
direction of the trenches a dark cloud was com- 
ing rapidly toward us. (A few nights before, 
while we were in trenches, we had been ordered 
to put on our gas masks; for, a little to the 
right of us, the Turks had turned the poison gas 
on the Gurkhas.) At first, the dark mass in the 
sky appeared to some to be poison gas. They 
immediately dived for their gas masks. As it 
came nearer, however, we were able to distin- 
guish that it was not a cloud, but a huge flock 
of wild geese, beginning their southern migra- 
tion. O'Dea selected a rifle from his collection, 
loaded it, and waited till the geese were almost 
directly overhead; then, amid derisive cheering, 
he fired ten rounds at them. They were much 
too high in air for a successful shot, even if he 
had used gunshot; but even after they were al- 
most over Imbros Island, Lew continued firing. 

124 



WAITING 

When an officer, arrived, demanding sarcasti- 
cally if Lew O'Dea would n't sooner send some 
written invitations to the Turks to shell us, he 
subsided, and began cleaning his artillery. Un- 
til then, we had been wearing thin khaki duck 
uniforms with short pants that made us look 
like boy scouts. We had found these rather cool 
at night; but in the hot days we preferred them 
to the heavy khaki drill uniforms that were kept 
in kit bags at the beach. I had landed without 
a kit bag, and the change of uniform I kept in 
the pack I carried on my back. A little while 
before, I had put on the heavy uniform and 
thrown away the light weight one. On the Pe- 
ninsula, w^hen you have to walk with all your 
possessions on your back, each additional ounce 
counts for much. As soon as we found that it 
was impossible to get water to wash or shave in, 
we threw away our towels and soap. A few kept 
their razors. The only thing I hung on to was 
my tooth brush — not for its legitimate purpose, 
but to clean the sand and grit out of my rifle. 

" Go over and ask Mr. Nunns," said Art to 
me, while we were cleaning our rifles, " if he '11 
give us a pass to go down to the beach to find my 
kit bag. I '11 finish cleaning your rifle while you 

125 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

go over." I handed the rifle to Art, and went 
over to look for Mr. Nunus. When I found him 
he was censoring some letters. 

" You 'd better wait till this afternoon, before 
going," he said. " I want you to take twenty 
men and carry up ten boxes of ammunition to 
the firing line, where A Company are. They 're 
coming out to-morrow night and we 're to relieve 
them. He gave me a pass, and I took it over to 
Art. 

" You can go down this morning if you like," 
I said, " or you can wait till I get back from this 
ammunition detail." 

" If you 're not later than two o'clock," said 
Art, " I '11 wait for you." 

I found the detail of twenty men for ammuni- 
tion-carrying waiting for me near the field 
kitchen. We crawled cautiously along some 
open ground, past the quarter-master's dugout 
and the dugouts that were dignified by the name 
of orderly room, where the colonel and adjutant 
conducted the clerical business of the battalion, 
issued daily orders, and sentenced defaulters. 
" Napoleon knew what was what," said the man 
near me, as he wriggled along, " when he said 
that an army fights on its stomach. I 've been 

126 



WAITING 

on my stomach half the time since I 've been in 
Gallipoli." We straightened up when we came 
to the commimication trench that gave us cover 
from snipers. Ordinarily we walked upright 
when we were behind the lines, but for a few 
days past enemy snipers had been extraordi- 
narily active. The Turkish snipers were the 
most effective part of their organization. Each 
sniper was armed with a rifle with telescopic 
sights. With a rifle so equipped, a good shot can 
hit a man at seven hundred yards, just as easily 
as the ordinary soldier can shoot at one hun- 
dred. 

The ten boxes of ammunition were very heavy, 
and the heat of the day necessitated a great many 
rests, before we reached the part of the line held 
by A Company. A Company had been losing 
heavily for a day or two because of snipers. A 
couple of the men were talking about it when 
I came along. 

" I don't see," one of them was saying, " how 
they can get us at night." 

" It 's this way," explained the other. " The 
cigarette makers send their snipers out some- 
time at night. Instead of going back that night 
they stay out for a week, or longer. All the ra- 

127 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

tioii Johnny Turk needs is a swallow of water, 
some onions, or olives, and a biscuit or two." 

" How is it," I asked, " we don't see tliem in 
the daytime? " 

" It 's this way," said the A Company man. 
" He paints himself, his rifle, and his clothes 
green. Then he twists some twigs and branches 
around him and kids you he 's a tree." 

*' The way they do in this part of the trench," 
said another man who had been listening to the 
conversation, '' is to work in pairs. They get a 
dugout somewhere where they can get a pretty 
good view of our trenches. They see where we 
move about most, and aim their machine gun at 
the top of the parapet. Then they clamp it 
down. At night when the sentries are i)()sted, 
they simply press the trigger, and there are some 
more casualties." 

" You 've got to hand it to Johnny Turk, just 
the same," said the first man. " One of them 
will stand up in his dugout in broad daylight, 
exposed from his waist up, and give you a chance 
to pot him, so that his mate can get you. We 
used to lose men that way first. As soon as we 
aimed, the second sniper turned his machine gun 
on us and got our man. Now we 've found a 

128 



WAITING 

better way. We stick a helmet iq) on top of a 
rifle just above the parapet, and fire from an- 
otlier part of the trench," 

" We 've been havinj^ trouble with them down 
in dugouts," I said. " Some of the fellows say 
it 's stray bullets, but it seems to me that they 're 
going too fast to be spent. You can tell a bullet 
that "s spent by the sound." 

One of the A Com])any sergeants who had been 
listening to discussion joined in. " It 's snipers 
all right," he said. " It 's easy enough for a 
German officer to get into our trenches. Men 
are coming in all the time from working parties, 
and night patrols, and the engineers go back and 
forth every hour or so fixing up the barb wire. 
Only a little while ago they found one fellow. 
He had stripped a uniform from one of our dead, 
dressed himself in it, and walked up to our para- 
pet one night. The sentry did n't know the dif- 
ference, because the other fellow spoke good Eng- 
lish, so he let him pass. All they have to do is 
say * What ho,' or, ' Where 's the Dublin's sec- 
tion of trench? ' They can get by all right." 

The officer to whom I had delivered the am- 
munition sent word that it had been checked and 
that we could return to our company. We were 

129 



TREXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

only a short distance down the communication 
trench when a party of officers came along. We 
drew a little to one side, and stopped to let them 
pass. Not one of them was under the rank of 
lieutenant-colonel, and one of them was a gen- 
eral. He was a rather tall, spare man, with a 
drooping brown mustache. He was most unlike 
the usual type of grufif, surly general officers in 
charge. His eyes had a kindly, friend-of-the- 
family sort of twinkle. His type was more like 
a superintendent of coustruction, or a kindly old 
family physician. " Look at the ribbons on the 
old boy's chest," said the man near me. '' He 's 
got enough medals to make a keel for a battle- 
ship." In the British army, those who have seen 
previous service wear on the breast of their 
tunics the ribbons for each campaign. The gen- 
eral halted his red-tabbed staff where we stood. 

"Are you Newfoundlanders, Corporal?" he 
said to me. 

" Yes, sir," I answered. 

'* They 've made it pretty warm for you since 
you 've been here," he added, with a smile. 
" Your men are most efficient trench diggers. If 
I had an array like them, we 'd dig our way to 
Constantinople.'' With that he passed on with 

130 



td 




WAITING 

a smile. A pompous-looking sergeant brought 
up the rear of the general's escort. 

" Who was that, that just spoke to us, Ser- 
geant? " I asked. 

The sergeant surveyed me contemptuously. 
" Is it possible that you don't know 'im. 'E 's 
General Sir Ian Hamilton, General Commander- 
in-Chief of the Mediterranean Force, 'e is." 

General Sir Ian Hamilton has won the un- 
questioned devotion of the First Newfoundland 
Regiment. Many times after that, he visited the 
front line trenches and stopped to exchange a 
few words with men here and there. It is a cu- 
rious thing that while the young subaltern lieu- 
tenants held themselves very much aloof, the 
senior officers chatted amiably with our men. 
The Newfoundlanders, democratic to the core, 
hated anything that in the least savored of 
" side," and they admired the courage of a gen- 
eral officer who took his chances in the firing 
line. 

Art was waiting for me when I reached the 
dugout after my ammunition fatigue. I accom- 
panied him down the mule path that led along 
the edge of the Salt Lake to West Beach, where 
we had made our landing the first night. The 

133 



TREXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

place looked yery different iio\y. Under the 
shelter of the beetling cliffs, the engineers had 
constructed dugouts of all sorts. The beach was 
piled high with boxes of beef, biscuits, jam, lime 
juice, and rum. At the top of the hill, a tem- 
porary dressing station for the wounded had been 
built; and nearer the beach was a clearing sta- 
tion, from which the ^younded were taken by 
motor ambulance to the hospital ship. At dif- 
ferent points along the beach, piers had been 
built for the landing of supplies and troops, and 
for the loading of wounded into lighters to be 
taken to the hospital ships waiting out in deeper 
water. The Australians had put up a wire fence 
around a part of beach and used it for a graye- 
yard. AVe found the man in charge of the kit 
bags of the Newfoundlanders, and after much 
search located Art's bag, and took out the stuff' 
we wanted. On the way back, in a little rayiue 
just on the edge of the Salt Lake, we came upon 
two horsemen. They were General Hamilton 
and his aide. The general returned our salute 
smilingly. 

''' Who is it? '■ said Art. 

" It 's Sir Ian Hamilton," I said. " Does n't 
134 



WAITING 

he look like the sort of mau it would be wise to 
confide in? " 

" Yes, he does," said Art. " Evidently he has 
confidence in our troops' ability to hold their 
own," added Art. " The Turks have four lines of 
trenches to fall back on ; we have only one firing 
line." 

There was the same group around the field 
kitchen when we arrived back at our lines. They 
were swapping yarns and telling stories with a 
lurid intermixture of profanity and a liberal 
sprinkling of trench slang. To me, one of the 
most interesting side lights of the war is the 
slang that forms a great part of the vocabulary 
of the trenches. Early morning tea, when we 
got it, was " gun-fire." A Turk was never a 
Turk. He was a Turkey, Abdul Pasha, or a 
cigarette maker. A regiment is a " mob." A 
psychologist would have been interested to see 
that nobody ever spoke of a comrade as having 
died or been killed, but had " gone west." All 
the time I was at the front, I never heard one 
of our men say that another had been killed. A 
man who was killed in our regiment had " lost 
his can," although this referred most particu- 

135 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

larly to men shot through the head. Ordinarily 
a dead man was called a " washout " ; or it was 
said that he had " copped it." The caution to 
keep your head down always came, " Keep your 
napper down low." To get wounded with one of 
our own bullets was to get a " dose of three-o 
three." The bullet has a diameter of three-hun- 
dred-and-three thousandths of an inch. 

Mr. Nunns came toward the group, looking 
for Stenlake. It was Sunday afternoon, and he 
thought it would be well to have a service. Sten- 
lake was found, and a crowd trailed after him 
to an empty dugout, where he gathered them 
about him and began. It was a simple, sincere 
service. Out there in that barren country, it 
seemed a strange thing to see those rough men 
gathered about Stenlake while he read a passage 
or led a hymn. But it was most impressive. 
The service was almost over, and Stenlake was 
offering a final prayer, when the Turkish batter- 
ies opened fire. Ordinarily at the first sound of 
a shell, men dived for shelter; but gathered 
around that dugout, where a single shell could 
have wrought awful havoc, not a man stirred. 
They stayed motionless, heads bowed reverently, 
until Stenlake had finished. Then quietly they 

136 



WAITING 

dispersed. As a lesson in faith it was most il- 
luminating. 

It was strange to see week by week the psy- 
chological change that had come over the men. 
Most of all I noticed it in the songs they sang. 
At first the songs had been of a boisterous char- 
acter, that foretold direful things that would 
happen to the Kaiser and his family " As we go 
marching through Germany." These had all 
given place to songs that voiced to some extent 
the longing for home that possessed these volun- 
tary exiles. " I want to go back to Michigan ' ' 
was a favorite. Perhaps even more so was 
" The little gray home in the West." " Tipper- 
ary" was still in demand, not because of the 
lilt of a march that it held, but for the pathetic 
little touch of " my heart 's right there," and 
perhaps for the reference to " the sweetest girl 
I know." 

Perhaps it may have been the effect of Sten- 
lake's service, or it may have been the news that 
we were to go into the firing line the next day, 
that made the men seek their dugouts early that 
Sunday evening. But there was something 
heavy in the air that night. For almost a week 
we had been comparatively safe in dugouts. To- 

137 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

morrow we were again to go into the firing line 
and wait impotently wliile our number was re- 
duced gradually but pitilessly. The hopeless- 
ness of the thing seemed clearer that evening 
than any other time we had been there. Simp- 
son, " the Man with the Donkeys," had been 
killed that day. After a whole summer in which 
he seemed to be impervious to bullets, a stray 
bullet had caught him in the heart on his way 
down Shrapnel Valley with a consignment of 
wounded. Simpson had been so much a part of 
the Peninsular life that it was hard to realize 
that he had gone to swell the list of heroes that 
Australia has so much cause to be proud of. A 
Company had suffered heavily in the front line 
trenches that day. A number of stretchers had 
passed down the road that ran in front of our 
dugouts, with A Company men for the dressing 
station on the beach. Snipers had been busy. 
From the A Company stretcher-bearers came 
news that others had been killed. One piece of 
news filtered slowly down to us that evening, 
that had an unaccountably strange effect on tlie 
men of B Company. Sam Lodge had been killed. 
Sam Lodge was perhaps the most widely known 
man in the whole regiment. There were very 

138 



WAITING 

few Newfoundlanders who did not think kindly 
of the big, quiet, reliable looking college man. 
He had enlisted at the very first call for volun- 
teers. Other men had been killed that day ; and 
since the regiment had been at Gallipoli, men 
had stood by while their dugout mates were torn 
by shrapnel or sank down moaning, with a 
sniper's bullet in the brain ; but nothing had ever 
had the same effect, at any rate on the men of 
our company, as the news that Sam Lodge had 
been killed that day. Perhaps it was that every- 
body knew him. Other nights men had crowded 
around the fire, telling stories, exchanging gos- 
sip, or singing. To-night all was quiet; there 
was not even the sound of men creeping about 
from dugout to dugout, visiting chums. Sud- 
denly, from away up on the extreme right end 
of the line of dugouts, came the sound of a clear 
tenor voice, singing, " Tenting To-night on the 
Old Camp Ground." Never have I heard any- 
thing so mournful. It is impossible to describe 
the penetrating pathos of the old Civil War song. 
Slowly the singer continued, amidst a profound 
hush. His voice sank, until one could scarcely 
catch the Avords when he sang, " Waiting for the 
war to cease." At last he finished. There was 

139 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

scarcely a stir, as the men dropped off to sleep. 
It was a quiet, sober lot of men who filed into 
a shady, tree-dotted ravine the next day behind 
the stretcher that bore the remains of Private 
Sam Lodge. Stenlake read the burial service. 
Everybody who could turned out to pay their 
last respects to the best liked man in the regi- 
ment. After the brief service, Colonel Burton, 
the commanding officer, Captain Carty, Lodge's 
company commander, a group of senior and 
junior officers, and a number of profoundly af- 
fected soldiers gathered about the grave while 
the body was lowered into it. In the shade of 
a spreading tree, within sound of the mournful 
wash of the tide in Suvla Bay, lies poor Sam 
Lodge, a good, cheerful soldier, uncomplaining 
always, a man whose last thought w^as for others. 
" Don't bother to lift me down off the parapet, 
boys," he had said when he was hit ; " I 'm fin- 
ished." 



140 



CHAPTER VI 

NO man's land 

OUR dugouts were located about a quarter of 
a mile inland from the edge of the Salt 
Lake. Somewhere at the other side of the Salt 
Lake was the cleverly concealed landing place of 
the aeroplane service. Commander Sampson, 
who had been in action since the beginning of the 
war, was in charge of the aeroplane squadron. 
One day, by clever manoeuvering he forced one 
of the enemy planes, a Taube, away from its own 
lines and back over the Salt Lake. Here after a 
spectacular fight in mid air, Sampson forced the 
other to surrender and captured his machine. 
The Taube he thereafter used for daily recon- 
naissance. Every afternoon we watched him 
hover over the Turkish lines, circle clear of their 
bursting shrapnel, poising long enough to com- 
plete his observations, then return to the Salt 
Lake with his report for our artillery and the 

141 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

navy. The day after Sam Lodge's burial, we 
watched two hostile 'planes chase Sauipsou back 
right to our trenches. AThen they came near 
enough, our men opened rapid fire that forced 
them to turn ; but before Sampson reached his 
landing place at Salt Lake, we could see that he 
was in trouble. One of the wings of his nuu'hine 
was drooping badly. From the other side of the 
Salt Lake, a motor and)ulance was tearing along 
towards the place where he was expected to land. 
The Taube sank gradually to the ground, the am- 
bulance drew up to within about thirty feet of 
it, and lurned about, waiting. We saw Sampson 
jump out of his seat, almost before the machine 
touched the ground, and walk to the waiting am- 
bulance. The and)ulance had just started, when 
a shell from a Turkish gun hit the prostrate 
aeroplane and tore a large hole in it. With 
marvelous precision, the Turkish battery pumped 
three or four shells almost on top of the first. 
In a few minutes, all that was left of the Taube 
was a twisted mass of frame work; of the wings, 
not a fragment remained. 

But although Sampson had lost his 'plane, he 
had comideted his mission. About half an hour 
later, the navy in the bay began a bombardment. 

142 



NO MAN'S LAND 

We could see the men-o'-war lined up, pouring 
broadsides over our heads into the Turkish 
trenches. First, we saw the gray ships calmly 
riding the Avaves; then, from their sides came 
pufi's of whilisli gray smoke, and the Hash of the 
discharge, followed by the jarring report of the 
explosion. Around the bend of Anafarta I>ay, 
we saw creeping in a strange, low-lying, awk- 
ward-looking craft that reminded one of the 
barges one sees used for dredging harbors. It 
was one of the new monitors, the most efficiently 
destructive vessel in the navy. Soon the artil- 
lery on the land joined in. About four o'clock 
the bombardment had started; and all that after- 
noon the terrific din kept up. When we went 
into the firing line that evening at dark, the bom- 
bardment was still going on. About nine o'clock 
it stopped ; but at three the next morning, it was 
resumed with even greater force. The part of 
the line we were holding was in a valley ; to the 
right and left of us, the trenches ran up hill. 
From our position in the middle, we had a splen- 
did view of the other parts of the line. All that 
morning the bondjardment kept up. Our gun- 
ners were concentrating on the trenches well up 
the hill on the left. First we watched our shells 

143 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

demolish the enemy's front line trench. Im- 
mense shells shrieked through the air above our 
heads and landed in the Turks' firing line. 
Gradually but surely the huge projectiles bat- 
tered down the enemy defenses. The Turks 
stuck to their ground manfully, but at last they 
had to give up. Through field glasses we could 
see the communication trenches choked with 
fleeing Turks. Some of our artillery, to prevent 
their escape, concentrated on the support 
trenches. This manoeuver served a double pur- 
pose: besides preventing the escape of those re- 
treating from the battered front line trench, it 
stopped reinforcements from coming up. Still 
farther back, a mule train bringing up supplies, 
was caught in open ground in the curtain of fire. 
The Turks, caught between two fires, could not 
escape. In a short time all that was left of the 
scientifically constructed intrenchments was a 
conglomerate heap of sand bags, equipments, and 
machine guns ; and on top of it all lay the man- 
gled bodies of men and mules. 

All through the bombardment, we had hoped 
for the order to go over the parapet. When we 
had been rushed to the firing line the night be- 
fore, we thought it was to take part in the at- 

144 



NO MAN'S LAND 

tack. Instead of this, we were held in the firing 
line. For the Worcesters on our left was re- 
served the distinction of making the charge. 
High explosives cleared the way for their ad- 
vance, and cheering and yelling they went over 
parapet. The Turks in the front line trenches, 
completely demoralized, fled to the rear. A few, 
too weak or too sorely wounded to run, surren- 
dered. While the bombardment was going on, 
our men stood in their trenches, craning their 
necks over the parapet. All through the after- 
noon, the excitement was intense. Men jumped 
up and down, running wildly from one point in 
the trench to another to get a better view. Some 
fired their rifles in the general direction of the 
enemy ; " just a few joy guns," they said. Every- 
body was laughing and shouting delightedly. 
Down in the bay, the gray ships looked almost 
as small as launches in the mist formed by the 
smoke of the guns. The Newfoundlanders 
might have been a crowd rooting at a baseball 
game. Every few minutes, when the smoke in 
the bay cleared sufliciently to reveal to us a 
glimpse of the ships, the v/enches resounded to 
the shouts of, " Come on, the navy," and " Good 
old Britain." And when the great masses of 

145 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

iron hurtled through the air and tore up sections 
of the enemy's parapet, we shouted delightedly, 
'' Iron rations for Johnny Turk ! " 

Prisoners taken in this engagement told us 
that the Turkish rank and file heartily hated 
their German officers. From the first, they had 
not taken kindly to underground warfare. The 
Turks were accustomed to guerilla fighting, and 
had to be driven into the trenches by the German 
officers at the point of their revolvers. One 
prisoner said that he had been an officer; but 
since the beginning of the campaign, he had been 
replaced by a German. At that time, he told us, 
the Turks were officered entirely by Germans. 
For two or three days after that, at short inter- 
vals, one or two at a time, Turks dribbled in to 
surrender. They were tired of fighting, they 
said, and were almost starved to death. Many 
more would surrender, they told us, but they 
were kept back by fear of being shot by their 
German officers. 

With the monotony varied occasionally by 
some local engagement like this, we dragged 
through the hot, fly-pestered days, and cold, 
drafty, vermin-infested nights of September and 
early October. By the middle of October, dis- 

146 



NO MAN'S LAND 

ease and scarcity of water had depleted our 
ranks alarmingly. Instead of having four days 
on the firing line and eight days' rest, we were 
holding the firing line eight days and resting 
only four. In my platoon, of the six noncom- 
missioned officers who had started with us, only 
two corporals were left, one other and I. For 
a week after the doctor had ordered him to leave 
the Peninsula, the other corporal hung on, 
pluckily determined not to leave me alone. All 
this time, the work of the platoon was divided 
hetween us; he stayed up half the night, and I 
the other half. At last, he had to be personally 
conducted to the clearing station. 

Just about the middle of October comes a 
Mohammedan feast that lasts for three or four 
days. During the days of the feast, while our 
battalion was in the firing line, some prisoners 
who surrendered told us that the Turks were 
suffering severely from lack of food and warm 
clothing. All sorts of rumors ran through the 
trench. One was that some one had reliable in- 
formation that the supreme commander of the 
Turkish forces had sent to Berlin for men to 
reinforce his army. If the reinforcements did 
not come in four days, he would surrender his 

147 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

entire command. Men ordered off the Peninsula 
by the medical officer, instead of proceeding to 
the clearing station, sneaked back to their posi- 
tions in the trench, waiting to see the surrender. 
But the surrender never came. Things went on 
in the same old dreary, changeless round. More 
than sickness, or bullets, the sordid monotony 
had begun to tell on the men. Every day, of- 
ficers were besieged with requests for permission 
to go out between the lines to locate snipers. 
When men were wanted for night patrol, for 
covering parties, or for listening post details, 
every one volunteered. Ration parties to the 
beach, which had formerly been a dread, were 
now an eagerly sought variation, although it 
was a certainty that from every such party we 
should lose ten per cent, of the personnel. Any 
change, of any sort, was w'elcome. The thought 
of being killed had lost its fear. Daily inter- 
course with death had robbed it of its horror. 
Here was one case where familiarity had bred 
contempt. Most of the men had sunk into 
apathy, simply waiting for the day their turn 
was to come, w^ondering how soon w^ould come 
the bullet that had on it their " name and num- 
ber." Most of the men in talking to each other, 

148 



NO MAN'S LAND 

especially to their sick comrades, spoke hopefully 
of the outcome ; but those I talked with alone all 
had the same thought: only by a miracle could 
they escape alive ; that miracle was a " cushy 
one." 

One wave of hope swept over the Peninsula in 
that dreary time. The brigade bulletin board 
contained the news that it was expected that in 
a day or two at the most Bulgaria would come 
into the war on the side of the Allies. To us 
this was of tremendous importance. With a 
frontier bordering on Turkey, Bulgaria might 
turn the scale in our favor. Life became again 
full of possibilities and interest. Our inter- 
preters printed up an elaborate menu in Turkish 
that recited the various good things that might 
be found in our trenches by Turks who would 
surrender. At the foot of the menus was a little 
note suggesting that now was the ideal time to 
come in, and that the ideal way to celebrate the 
feast was to become our guests. These menus 
we attached to little stakes and just in front of 
the Turkish barbed wire we stuck them in the 
ground. Several Turks came in within the next 
few days, but whether as a result of this or not, 
it was impossible to say. The feeling of re- 

149 



TREXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

newed hope and buoyancy caused by the news 
of the imminence of Bulgaria's alliance with us 
was of short duration. A day or so afterwards 
came the alarming news that the Allied min- 
isters had left Bulgaria; and the following day 
came word that Bulgaria had joined in the war. 
not with us, but with the Central Powers. 
Again apathy settled on the men. ;Now. too. the 
rainy season had set in in earnest. Torrents 
of rain poured down daily on the trenches, chok- 
ing the drains, and tilling the passageway with 
thick gray mud in which one slip]U\l and tioun- 
dered helplessly, and which coated uniforms and 
equipments like cement. One relief it did bring 
with it. Men who had not had a bath, or a 
shave in months, were able to collect in their 
rubber sheets enough rain water to wash and 
shave with. But the drinking water was still 
scarce. On other parts of the Peninsula there 
was plenty of it ; but we had so few men avail- 
able for duty that we could scarcely spare 
enough men to go for it. Also, there was the 
difficulty in securing proper receptacles for its 
conveyance. ^lost of the men were very uuich 
exhausted, and the trip of four or live miles for 
water would have been too much for them. 

150 



NO MAN'S LAND 

Even when we did get water, it had to be boiled 
to kill the germs of disease, and to prevent men 
from being x)oisoned. The boiled water was flat 
and tasteless; and to counteract this, we were 
given a spoonful of lime juice about once a week. 
This we put in our water bottles. About every 
third day we were issued some rum. Twice a 
week, an officer appeared in the trench carrying 
a large stone jar bearing the magic letters in 
black paint, V. D, R., Pure Demerara Rum. 
This he doled out as if every drop had cost a 
million dollars. Each man received just enough 
to cover the bottom of his canteen, not more than 
an eighth of a tumbler. Just before going out 
on any sort of night fatigue on the wet ground, 
it was particularly grateful. We had long ago 
given up reckoning time by the calendar, and 
days either were or were not " Rum days." Men 
who were wounded on these days bequeathed 
their share to their particular pals or to their 
dugout mates. Some of the men were total ab- 
stainers with the courage of their convictions; 
they steadfastly refused to touch it. The other 
men canvassed these on rum days for their share 
of the fiery liquid, and in exchange did the 
temperance men's share of fatigue duty. Dur- 

151 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

ing this time, there was very little fighting. 
Both sides were intrenched and prepared to stay 
there for the winter. In the particular section 
of trench we held, we knew that any attempt at 
an advance would be hopeless and suicidal. 
The ground in front was too well commanded by 
enemy machine guns. Still, we thought that 
some other parts of the line might advance and 
turn one of the tlanks of the enemy. Nothing 
was impossible to the Dublins or the Munsters ; 
and there was always faith in the invincible 
Australasians. We could not forget the way the 
Australasians a short lime before had celebrated 
the news of the British advance at Loos. 

Just after the Turkish feast, we went into dug- 
outs again for a few days, and back once more 
to the firing line. This time, we were up in the 
farm house district near Chocolate Hill. It was 
a place particularly exposed to shell fire ; for the 
old skeletons of farm houses made good targets 
for the enemy's guns. Every afternoon, the 
Turks sent over about a dozen or so shells, just 
to show us that they knew we were there. After 
Bulgaria came in against us, it seemed to us that 
the Turks grew much more prodigal of their 
shells than formerly. Where before they sent 

152 



NO MAN'S LAND 

over ten, they now fired twenty. It was rather 
grimly ironic to find, on examination of some of 
the shell casings, that they were shells made by 
Great Britain and su^jplied to the Turks in the 
Balkan War. There was a certain amount of 
sardonic satisfaction in knowing that the fortifi- 
cations on Achi Baba were jilaced there by 
British engineers when we looked on the Turks 
as friends. No. 8 x^latoon was intrenched just 
in front of a field in which grew a number of 
apple trees. In the daytime we could not get 
to these, but at night some of the more venture- 
some spirits crawled out and returned with their 
haversacks full. A little further along was what 
had once been a garden. Even now there were 
still growing some tomatoes and some water- 
melons. The rest of it was a mass of battered 
stones that had once been fences. Here it was 
that the old gray bearded farmers who had been 
peacefully working in their fields had hung up 
their scythes and taken down from their hook 
on the wall old rusty muskets and fought in their 
dooryards to defend their homes. The oncoming 
troops had swept past them, but at a tremendous 
cost. For a whole day the battle had swayed 
back and forth. Where formerly had bloomed a 

153 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

luxuriant garden or orchard, was now a plowed 
field, — plowed not with farm implements but 
with shrapnel and high explosive shells. Dot- 
ting it here and there, were the little rough 
wooden crosses that gave the simple details of 
a man's regimental name, number, and date of 
death. Not a few of them were in memory of 
" Unknown Comrades." And once in a while one 
saw a cross that marked the resting place of the 
foe. Feeling toward the enemy differed with in- 
dividuals; but we were all agreed that Johnny 
Turk was a good, clean, sporty fighter, who gen- 
eralh' gave as good as we could send. There- 
fore, whenever we could we gave him decent 
burial, we stuck a cross up over him, although 
he did not believe in what it symbolized, and we 
took off his identification disk and personal 
papers. These we handed to our interpreters, 
who sent them to the neutral consuls at Con- 
stantinople ; and they communicated through the 
proper channels with the deceased's various 
widows. 

After a week or so in this district, we moved 
back again to our old quarters at Auafarta vil- 
lage. Here we took over a block house occupied 
by the Essex. The Dublins and the Munsters 

154 



NO MAN'S LAND 

were on our right. The block house was an ad- 
vanced post that we held in the morning and 
during the night. Every afternoon we left it for 
a few hours while the enemy wasted shells on it. 
A couple of Irish snipers were with us. The 
first day they were there, our Lieutenant, Mr. 
Nunns, spent the day with them; that day, he 
accounted for four Turks. This was the closest 
we had yet been to them. I stood up beside an 
Irish sniper and looked through a pair of field 
glasses to where he pointed out some snipers' 
dugouts. They were the same dugouts that 
Cooke, the Irish V. C. man, had shown me. 
While I was watching, I saw an old Turk sneak- 
ing out between his trench and one of the dug- 
outs. He looked old and stooped and had a 
long whisker that reached almost to his waist 
and appeared to have difficulty in getting along. 
All about him were little canvas pockets that 
contained bombs and about his neck was a long 
string of small bombs. " Begob," said one of the 
Dublins, beside me, '' 't is the daddy of them all. 
Get him, my son." I grasped my gun excitedly 
and aimed; but before I had taken the pressure 
of the trigger, I heard from a little distance to 
the right the staccato of a machine gun. The 

155 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

result was astonishing. One second, I was look- 
ing through my sights at the Turk; the next, he 
had disappeared, and in his place was the most 
marvelous combination of all colors of flames I 
have ever seen. Literally Johnny Turk had gone 
up in smoke. The Irishman beside me was 
standing open mouthed. 

" Glory be to God," he said, " what does that 
make you think of? " 

" It reminds me," I said, " of a Fourth of July 
celebration in the States; and I wdsh," I added 
heartily, " I was there now." 

" It makes me think, my son," said the Irish- 
man, " of the way ould Cooke killed a lot of the 
sausage-makers over on the other side. He 
threw a bomb in among tin of 'em and then fired 
his rifle at it and exploded it. Killed every 
damn one of 'em, he did. 'T was the same time 
he got the V. C." 

" I suppose," I said, " Cooke 's in London now 
getting his medal from the King. He 's through 
with this Peninsula." 

" Thrue for you, my son," said the Irishman, 
" he 's through with this Peninsula, but he 's not 
in London. 'T was just three nights ago that I 
went out yonder, and tin yards in front of that 

156 







© lTn.Ierwoo.1 ,v \ n l.-rw,.,, 1. N. Y. 

Australians in the trenches consider clothes a siipcrHuity 



NO MAN'S LAND 

dugout I found ould Cooke's body. The Turrk 
got him right through the cap badge and blew 
the top clean off his head. 'T is just luck. Some 
has it one way, and some has it another; but 
whichever way you have it, it don't do you no 
good to worry over it." 

Having delivered himself of this satisfying 
philosophy, he resumed his survey of the ground 
in front. 

About ten yards outside the block house we 
were holding, the Turks had, under cover of 
darkness, almost completed a sap, with the ob- 
ject of surrounding the block house. A detach- 
ment of the Dublins with three or four bomb 
throwers sapped out to the left of the sap the 
enemy was digging, after a short but exciting 
engagement, bombed them out of it, and took the 
sap at the point of the bayonet. They found it 
occupied by only two Turks, who surrendered. 
The rest were able to get back to their own 
trench. We cut the corner off this sap, rounded 
it off to surround our block house, and occupied 
it. It brought us to within fifty yards of the 
enemy firing line. We could hear them talking 
at night; and in the daj^time we could see them 
walking about their trenches. At this point, 

159 



TRENCHING AT CLVLLIPOLI 

they bad iu their Hues a uiiiiiber of aiiiinals, 
chietly dogs. Iu additiou, they had a brass band 
that played timeless, wailitii;" imisu' nearly every 
niiiht, to the aeeompaninient of the howliug- aud 
barking of dogs. Some of (he men elaimed that 
the dogs were trained animals who carried food 
to snipers aud who were taught to find the Turk- 
ish wounded. This may have been true; but I 
have always believed that their chief use was to 
cover the noise of secret operations. This seems 
likely, for they were able to get their sap almost 
finished without our hearing them. 

The block house we held stood just iu the 
center of the line that the Fifth Norfolks had 
charged into early iu August, aud from which 
not one man had emerged. The second or third 
day we occupied it, a detachment of engineers 
was sent in to make loopholes aud prepare it for 
a stubborn defense. In the wall ou the left they 
made a large loophole. The sentry posted there 
the first morning saw about twenty feet away 
the body of a British soldier, partly buried. 
Two A'olunteers to bury the body were asked for. 
Half a dozen otTered, although it was broad day- 
light and the place the body lay in offered no 
protection. 

160 



KG MAN'S LAND 

Before any one could be selected, Art Pratt 
and young Hayes made the decision by jumjiing 
up, taking their picks and shovels, and vaulting 
over the wall of the block house. They walked 
out to where the body lay. It had been torn in 
pieces b}^ a shell the previous afternoon. At 
first a few bullets tore up little spurts of ground 
near the two men, but as soon as they 
reached the body, this stojjped. The Turks 
never fired on burial parties; and men on the 
Peninsula, wounded by snipers, tell strange 
stories of dark-skinned visitors who crep)t up to 
them after dark, bound up their wounds, gave 
them water, and helped them to within shouting 
distance of their own lines, where at daylight 
the next morning their comrades found them. 
Once one of our batteries was very near a dress- 
ing station when a stray shell, fired at the bat- 
tery, hit the dressing station. The Turkish ob- 
server heliographed over and apologized. That 
is why we respected the Turk. When we tried 
to shoot him, he chuckled to himself and sniped 
us from trees and dugouts ; and when we reviled 
him and threw tins of apricot jam at him, he 
gave thanks to Allah, and ate the jam. The 
empty tins he filled with jjowder and returaed 

161 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

to us ill the shape of bombs. Only once did he 
really lose his temper. That was when under 
his very eyes we deliberately undressed on his 
beach and disported ourselves in the JEgean Sea. 
Then he sent over shells that shrieked at us to 
get out of his ocean. But in his angriest mo- 
ments he respected the Red Cross and never ill 
treated our wounded. One chap, an English- 
man, was wounded in the head just as he reached 
the Turkish trench during a charge. The bullet 
went in the side of his head, ruining both his 
eyes. He was captured as he toppled over into 
the trench, was taken to Constantinople, well 
treated in hospital there, and returned in the 
first batch of exchanged prisoners. When I met 
him in Egypt, he had nothing but kind words 
for the Turks. When the enemy saw the object 
of the little expedition, they allowed Art and 
Hayes to proceed unmolested. We watched 
them dig a grave beside the corpse; and when 
they had finished, with a shovel they turned the 
body into it. Before doing it, they searched the 
man for personal papers and took off his identifi- 
cation disk. These bore the name, " Sergeant 
Golder, Fifth Norfolk Regiment." That was in 
the last part of October ; and since August 10th 

162 



NO MAN'S LAND 

not a word had been heard of the missing Nor- 
folk regiment. To this day, the whole affair re- 
mains a mystery. The regiment disappeared as 
if the ground had swallowed them up. On the 
King's Sandringham estate, families are still 
hoping against hope that there may sometime 
come word that the men are prisoners in Turkey. 
Neutral consuls in Constantinople have been ap- 
pealed to, and have taken the matter up with the 
Turkish Government. The most searching in- 
quiries have elicited nothing new. The answer 
has always been the same. The Turkish au- 
thorities know no more about it than the Eng- 
lish. Two hundred and fifty men were given the 
order to charge into a wood. The only sign that 
they ever did so, is the little wooden cross that 
reads 

IN MEMORY OF 

Sergeant J. Golder 

FIFTH NORFOLK REGIMENT 
KILLED IN ACTION 



163 



CHAPTER VII 

WOUNDED 

THE gorgeous tropical sunset had given place 
to the inky darkness of a Turkish night, 
when we moved into trenches well up on the side 
of a hill that overlooked Anafarta Plain. Here 
an advance had been unsuccessful, and the Turks 
had counter attacked. Half way, the British 
had dug in hastily, in hard limestone that re- 
sisted the pick. Xo. S platoon held six traverses. 
Four of these were exposed to enfilade fire. 
About two hundred yards away, at an angle on 
the left front, a number of snipers had built some 
dugouts on Caribou Ridge. These they manned 
with machine guns. From this elevation, they 
could pour their fire into our trenches. Several 
attempts had been made to dislodge them; but 
their machine guns commanded the intervening 
ground and made an advance impossible. Their 
first line trench was about two hundred yards in 
front of us. Thirty or forty yards nearer us 

164 



WOUNDED 

thoY wore building a sap that ran parallel with 
their lines for about five hundred yards. At 
that point it took a sharp V turn inward toward 
us. The proximity of the enemy, and the con- 
tour of the ground so favorable to them, made 
it necessary to take extra precautions, espe- 
cially at night. Each night, at the point where 
the enemy sap turned toward us, we sent out a 
listening patrol of two men and a corporal. The 
fourth night, my turn came. That day it had 
rained without cessation; and in the early part 
of the evening I had tried to sleep, but my wet 
clothes and the pouring rain had made it impos- 
sible. I felt rather glad when I was told that 
at one-thirty I was to go out for two hours on 
listening patrol. That night we had been is- 
sued some rum, and I had been fortunate enough 
to get a good portion. I decided to reserve it 
until I went out. About ten o'clock I gave up 
attempting to sleep, and walked down the trench 
a little way to where a collection of trees and 
brush had been laid across the top. Some one, 
with memories of London's well-known meeting 
place, had christened it the Marble Arch. I 
stood under this arch, where the rain did not 
penetrate, and talked with the corporal of an 

1G5 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

English regiment who were holding the line on 
the other side of the Marble Arch. A Sergeant 
Manson, who had been loaned to us from another 
platoon, came along and we talked for a while. 
He had received some chocolate that evening, and 
the next morning he was going to distribute it 
among the men. It was in a haversack under 
his head, he said, and he was going to sleep on 
it to prevent it from being stolen. About eleven 
he returned to his place on the firing platform 
and went to sleep. I was ravenously hungiy, 
and had nothing to eat. I could not find even a 
biscuit. I did find some bully beef, and ate some 
of it, washing it down with a swallow of the pre- 
cious rum from my water bottle. Then I re- 
membered the chocolate under Sergeant Man- 
son's head, and went over to where he was lying. 
He was breathing heavily in the deep sleep of 
exhaustion. Quietly I slipped my hand into the 
haversack, and took out four or five little cubes 
of chocolate about an inch long. Manson 
stirred sleepily and murmured, " What do you 
want? " then turned over and again began breath- 
ing regularly. It was now almost time to start 
for the listening post. So I went along the 
trench to where I knew young Hayes was sleep- 

166 



WOUNDED 

ing. He had volunteered as oue of the men to 
accompany me, and from D Company I got the 
second man. My platoon by this time had been 
reduced to eighteen men, and I was the only non- 
com. We had to get men from D Company to 
take turns on the parapet at night, although they 
were supposed to be resting at the time. Be- 
tween us and the Turkish sap a small rise cov- 
ered with short evergreen bushes prevented us 
from seeing them. To get to this we had to cross 
about fifty yards of ground with fairly good 
cover, and another fifty yards of bare ground. 
Where the bare ground began, a ditch filled with 
dank, wet grass served as our listening post, A 
large tree with spreading boughs gave us some 
shelter. From behind this we could watch the 
rising ground in front. Any of the enemy at- 
tempting an advance had to appear over this rise. 
Our instructions w^ere to watch this, and report 
any movement of the enemy, but not to fire, I 
left young Hayes about half way between this 
tree and the trench, and the other man and I 
spread a rubber sheet under the tree and made 
ourselves as comfortable as possible. The rain 
was still coming down with a steadiness that 
promised little hope of stopping. After a little 

167 



TREyCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

while I became numbed, and decided to move 
about a little. Wheu 1 came on the Peninsula, 
I had no overcoat, but a little time before had 
secured a very line gray woolen great-coat from 
a Turk. It had been at one time the property of 
a GermiUi officer, and was very warm and com- 
fortable, with a large collar and deep thick cuffs. 
I had worn it about the trench and it had been 
the subject of much comment. That night I 
wore it. and over it a raincoat. So that my 
movements might be le5?s constricted. I took off* 
the raincoat, and loft it with the D Company 
man. who stayed under the tree. It was pitch 
dark, and I got across the open space to the ever- 
green-covered rise without being seen. Here I 
dropped on my stomach and wriggled botwoou 
wet bushes that pricked my face, up to the top. 
It was only about thirty feet, but it took me al- 
most an hour to get up there. By the time I had 
reached the top it had stopped raining and stars 
had come out. I crawled laboriously a short dis- 
tance down the other side of the little hill; I 
parted the bushes slowly and was preparing to 
draw myself a little further when I saw some- 
thing that nearly turned mo siok with horror. 
Almost under my face were the bodies of two 



WOUXDED 

men, one a Turk, the other au EDglishman. 
They were both on their sides, and each of them 
were trauslixed with the bayonet of the other. 
I don't know how long I stayed tliere. It seemed 
ages. At last I gathered myself together, and 
withdrew cantionsly, a little to the right. My 
nerves were so shaken by what I had just seen 
that I decided to return at once to the man under 
the tree, \yhen I had gone back about ten feet 
I was seized with an overwhelming desire to go 
back and find out to what regiment the dead 
Englishman belonged. At the moment I turned, 
my attention was distracted by the noise of men 
walking not very far to the front. I crawled 
along cautiously and peered over the top of the 
rise where I could see the enemy sap. The noise 
was made by a digging party who were just 
tiling into the sap. For almost an hour I lay 
there watching them. It gave me a certain sat- 
isfaction to aim my ritle at each one in turn and 
think of the efifect of a mere pressure of the trig- 
ger. But my orders were not to fire. I was on 
listening patrol, and we had men out on differ- 
ent working parties, who might be hit in the re- 
sulting return fire. At intervals I could hear 
behind me the report of a rille, and wondered 

169 



TKEXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

what fool was shooting from our lines. When I 
thought it was time to go back I crawled down 
the hill, and found to my consternation that the 
moon was full, and the space between the foot of 
the little rise and the tree was stark white in the 
moonlight. I had just decided to make a sharp 
dash across when the firing that I had heard be- 
fore recommenced. Instead of being from our 
lines it came from a tree a short distance to the 
left, at the end of the open space. It was Johnny 
Turk, cozily ensconced in a tree that overlooked 
our trench. TMienever he saw a movement he 
fired. He used some sort of smokeless powder 
that gave no flash, and it was most foi-tunate 
for me that I happened to be at the only angle 
that he could be seen from. I resumed my wrig- 
gling along the edge of the open space to where 
it ended in thick grass. Through this I crawled 
until I had come almost to the edge of the ditch 
in which I had left the other man. But to reach 
it I had to cross about ten feet of perfectly bare 
ground that gave no protection. Had the Turk 
seen me he could have hit me easily. I decided 
to crawl across slowly, making no noise. I put 
my head out of the thick grass and with one knee 
and both hands on the ground poised as a run- 

170 



WOUNDED 

ner does at the start of a race. Against the clear 
white ground I must have loomed large, for al- 
most at once a bullet whizzed through the top of 
the little brown woolen cap I was wearing. Just 
then the D Company man caught sight of me, 
and raised his gun. " Who goes there? " he 
shouted. I did some remarkably quick thinking 
then. I knew that the bullet through my cap 
had not come from the sniper, and that some one 
one of our men had seen my overcoat and mis- 
taken me for a Turk. I knew the sniper was in 
the tree, and the D Company's man's challenge 
would draw his attention to me ; also I knew tliat 
the Newfoundlander might shoot first and es- 
tablish my identity afterwards. lie was wrong 
in challenging me, as his instructions were to 
make no noise. But that was a question that I 
had to postpone settling. I decided to take a 
chance on the man in the listening post. I 
shouted, just loud enough for him to hear me, 
" Newfoundland, you damn fool, Newfound- 
land," then tore across the little open space and 
dived head first into the dank grass beside him. 
When I had recovered my breath, with a vocabu- 
lary inspired by the occasion, I told him, clearly 
and concisely, what I thought of him. While it 

171 



TREXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

may uot have beeu coiiiplimeutary it Avas boyoud 
qiiostiou candid. "Wlieu I bad tiiiisbed. 1 seut 
biiii back to relieve yoiiiiir Hayes with instriio- 
tious to seud Hayes out to me. In a few min- 
utes Hayes came. 

*' Do you know. Corporal," he said as be came 
u\) beside me, " I almost shot you a few minutes 
ago. I should have when the other fellow chal- 
lenged you if you had u't said * Newfoundland.' 
I lired at you once. I saw you go out one way, 
and when you came back I could just see your 
Turkish overcoat. ' Here/ says I to myself, ' is 
Abdul Pasha trying to get the Corporal, and I '11 
get him.' Instead of that I almost got you." 

Whether or not the noise I made caused the 
sniper to become more cautious I don't know, 
but I heard no further shots from him from then 
until the time I was relieved. 

The arrival of a relief patrol prevented my 
replying to young Hayes. I went back to my 
place in the trench, but try as I might I could 
not sleep; I twisted from side to side, took olf 
my equipment and cartridge pouches, adjusted 
blankets and rubber sheet, tried another place on 
the tiring platform; I threw myself down llat in 
the bottom of the trench. Still I could uot get 

172 



WOUNDED 

asleep. At last I abandoned the attempt, took 
from my haversack a few cigarettes, lit one, and 
on a piece of coarse paper began maJving a little 
diagram of the ground I had covered that night, 
and of the position of the sniper I had been 
watching. By the time I had completed it day- 
light had come, and with it the familiar " Stand 
to." After " Stand to," I crawled under a rub- 
ber sheet and snatched a few hours' sleep before 
breakfast. Just after breakfast, a man from A 
Company came through the trench, munching 
some fancy biscuits and carrying in his hand a 
can of sardines. The German Kaiser could not 
have created a greater impression. " Where had 
he got them, and how?" lie explained that a 
canteen had been opened at the beach. Here 
you could get everything that a real grocery store 
boasts, and could have it charged on your pay- 
book. " A Company men," he said, " had all 
given orders through their quarter-master ser- 
geant, and had received them that morning." 
Then followed a list of mouth-watering delica- 
cies, the very names of whicli we had almost for- 
gotten. A deputation instantly waited on Mr. 
Nunns. He knew nothing of the thing, and was 
incensed that his men had not been allowed to 

173 



TKKNCIUNG AT ii AlllTOLl 

j^riicij^\te iu the jixhhI thuijrs>. Ho dt-putoJ luo 
to g\> iio>vu tuul lutike iunviirit^s at A Oomi^iuy s 
Uno^. I iHd 5i:v\ aiul fouiui that tUo tir^t man had 
Ihvu ivrfiVtly corrtvi. A Coiui^iuy was ivvel- 
iuiT in siiirviiiu^!?, white bread, rt\U butter, drip* 
piiijr fn>m nust Kvf. aiul tius of ^ihuou and lol>- 
ster. If we jraw an onler that d»i>\ I was told, 
we s^hould liot it tilled the next, Klati\l, 1 i\^ 
turneii to l» Oominvnv's Uut^ with the news. 
The dove returuinj: to the ark with the oUve 
braneh i\nild not have Kvn niort^ weloi^uie. Mr. 
Nuuns fairly Wamtnl s;iti?ifaotion. A few of the 
more iH^sj?imi$tic retUvltnl aloud that they mijihi 
gi^i killtHi Wfore the thiuj:^ arriviHl. 

Just before nine o'elivk 1 went down to see the 
ixx^ks aK^ut dinner for n\y stvtion. i^^u n\y way 
iKiek 1 ivxsstHl a man irxuujr down the trtnuh on 
a stretcher. One at the stivloher Ivart^rs told me 
that he had Kvn hit in the head while piekinir up 
rubbish on top of the jvttnii^et. lie hoinnl to get 
him to the drt\ssing station alivw As I oame into 
our own lines another strtMoher passi\l me. The 
man on this one was siltinij up. irrinninir. 

** Hello. Gal." he A-elU\i. *' 1 *ve stopivd a 
cushy one." 

I laughtHl. "Row ilid it hapixm?" I asked. 
174 



g" 



w 




WOUND I ]D 

" Picking up rubbish ou top of the parupot." 

ITo (Hsjjppoaretl Jii'ound llio curvo oT the trench, 
(U'li.uhtcdly sprcjulinj;- I he news that he had 
sioi)]>e(l a cushy one in Ihe Icu'. I kept on back 
(o my own traverse, and showed (he diagram I 
had made the night before to Art Trait. ]Mr. 
Nunns had granted us leave (o go out that chiy 
to try (o get (he sniper in (he (ree. Art was ch'- 
lighted at (he chance of some varie(y. ^Vhile 
Art and I were making ont a lis( of things w(» 
wanted at the canteen, a man in my section came 
(U)wn the trench. 

'H\)ri)oral Cialiisliaw," lie said, "the Hrigmh* 
Major i)assed through the lines a few minutes 
ago, and he's raising hell at the state of tlu^ 
lines; you 've got to go out with live men, picking 
up rubbish on toi) of the parai)i't.'' 

Instantly there canu» before my eyes the vision 
of the strangely limj) foiin I had met only a fvw 
minutes before that had hvvu hit in the head 
*^ l)icking u|) rubbish on top of the parapet." 
But in the army one cannot sto[) to think of such 
things long; orders have to be obeyed. Since 
coming into the trench we had const ructcMl a 
dump, but the former occupants of the trench 
had thrown their refuse on top of the parapet. 

177 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

My job with the five men was to collect this nib 
bish and put it in our dump. At nine o'clock in 
the morning we mounted the parapet and began 
digging. There was no cover for men standing; 
the low bushes hid men sitting or lying. Every 
few minutes I gave the men a rest, making them 
sit in the shelter of the underbrush. The sun 
was shining brightly; and after the wet spell we 
had just passed through, the warmth was pe- 
culiarly grateful. The news that the canteen 
had been opened on the beach made most of the 
men optimistic. With good things to eat in sight 
life immediately became more bearable. Never 
since the first day they landed had the men 
seemed so cheerful. Up there where we were the 
sun was very welcome, and we took our time over 
the job. One chap had that morning been given 
fourteen days' field punishment, because he had 
left his post for a few seconds the night before. 
He wanted to get a pipe from his coat pocket, 
and did not think it worth while to ask any one 
to relieve him. It was just those few seconds 
that one of the brigade officers selected to visit 
our trench. When he saw the post vacant, he 
waited until the man returned, asked his name, 
then reported him. Field punishment meant 

178 



WOUNDED 

that in addition to his regular duties the man 
would have to work in every digging party or 
fatigue detail. I asked him why he had not sent 
for me, and he told me that it had happened 
while I was out in the listening patrol. He was 
not worrying about the inmishment, but feared 
that his parents might hear of it througli some 
one writing home. But after a little while even 
he caught the spirit of cheerfulness that had 
spread amongst us at the news of the new can- 
teen. To the average person meals are like the 
small white spaces in a book that divide the para- 
graphs; to us they had assumed the proportions 
of the paragraph themselves. The man who had 
just got field punishment told me the things he 
had ordered at the canteen, and we compared 
notes and made suggestions. The ubiquitous 
Hayes, working like a beaver with his entrench- 
ing tool, threw remarks over his shoulder anent 
the man who had delayed the information that 
the canteen had been established, and offered 
some original and unique suggestions for that in- 
dividual's punishment. When we had the rub- 
bish all scraped up in a pile, we took it on shovels 
to the dump we had dug. To do this we had to 
walk upright. We had almost finished when the 

179 



TREXCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

snipers ou Caribou Ridge begau to bang at us. I 
jumped to a small depression, aud yelled to the 
men to take cover. They were ahead of me. tak- 
ing the last shovelful of rubbish to the treneh. 
At the warning to take cover, they separated aud 
dived for the bushes on either side. That is, 
they all did except Hayes, who either did not 
hear me or did not know just where to go. I 
stepped up out of the depression and pointed 
with outstretched arm to a cluster of under- 
brush. " Get in there, Hayes I " I yelled. Just 
then I felt a dull thud in my left shoulder blade, 
and a sharp pain in the region of my heart. At 
first I thought that in running for cover one of 
the men had thrown a pick-ax that hit me. Un- 
til I felt the blood trickling down my back like 
warm water, it did not occur to me that I had 
been hit. Then came a drowsy, languid sensa- 
tion, the most enjoyable and pleasant I have ever 
experienced. It seemed to me that my backbone 
became like pulp, and I closed up like a concer- 
tina. Gradually I felt my knees giving wa;\' 
under me. then my head dropped over on my 
chest, and down I went. In Eg^-pt I had seen 
Mohammedans praying with their faces toward 
Mecca, aud as I collapsed I thought that I must 

ISO 



WOUNDED 

look exactly as they did when they bent over and 
touched their heads to the groimd, worshijiing 
the Prophet. Connecting the pain in my chest 
with the blow in iny back, I decided that the 
bnllet had gone in my shoulder, through my left 
lung, and out through my heart, and I concluded 
I was doue for. I can distinctly remember 
thinking of myself as some one else. I recollect 
saying, half regretfully, " Poor old Gal is ont 
of luck this morning," then adding philosophi- 
cally, " Well, he had a good time while he was 
alive, anyway." By now tilings had grown very 
dim, and I felt everything slipping away from 
me. I was myself again, but I said to that other 
self who was lying there, as I thought, dying, 
" Buck up, old Gal, and die like a sport." Just 
then I tried to say, " I 'm hit." It sounded as if 
somewhere miles awnj a faint echo mocked me. 
I must have succeeded in making myself heard, 
because immediately I could hear Hayes yell 
with a frenzied oath, " The Corporal 's struck. 
Can't you see the Corporal 's struck? " and heard 
him cnrse the Turk who had fired the shot. Al- 
most instantly Hayes was kneeling beside me, 
trying to find the wound. He was much more 
excited over it than I. 

181 



tkenchi:ng at gallipoli 

"Don't you try to bandage it here/' I said; 
" yell for stretcher bearers." 

Hayes jumped up, shouting lustily, ^' Stretcher 
bearers at the double, stretcher bearers at the 
double!" then added as an after-thought, "Tell 
Art Pratt the Corporal 's struck." 

I was now quite clear headed again and told 
Hayes to shout for " B Company stretcher bear- 
ers." On the Peninsula messages were sent 
along the trench from man to man. Sometimes 
when a traverse separated two men, the one re- 
ceiving the message did not bother to step 
around, but just shouted the message over. 
Often it was not heard, and the message stopped 
right there. One message there was though, that 
never miscarried, the one that came most fre- 
quently, " Stretcher bearers at the double." Un- 
less the bearers from some particular company 
were specified, all who received the message re- 
sponded . It was to avoid this that I told Hayes 
to yell for B Company sh'etcher bearers. Ap- 
parently some one had heard Hayes yell, " Tell 
Art Pratt the Corporal *s struck," because in a 
few minutes Art was bending over me, talking 
to me gently. Three other men whom I could 
not see had come with him ; they had risked their 

182 



WOUNDED 

lives to come for me under lire. " We must get 
him out of this," I lieard Art say. lu tiiat mo- 
ment of danger liis tliought was not for liimself, 
but for me. I was able to tell them how to lift 
me. No women could have been more gentle or 
tender than those men, in carrying me back to 
the trench. Although bullets were pattering 
around, they walked at a snail's pace lest the least 
hurried movement might jar me and add to my 
pain. The stretcher bearers had arrived by the 
time we reached the trench, and were unrolling 
bandages and getting iodine ready. At first 
there was some difficulty in getting at the wound. 
It had bled so freely that the entire back of my 
coat was a mass of blood. The men who had car- 
ried me looked as if they had been wounded, so 
covered with blood were they. The stretcher 
bearer's scissors would not work, and Art angrily 
demanded a sharp knife, which some one pro- 
duced. The stretcher bearer ripped up my cloth- 
ing, exposing my shoulder, then began patching 
up my right shoulder. I cursed him in fraternal 
trench fashion and told him he was working on 
the wrong shoulder; I knew I had been hit in 
the left shoulder and tried to explain that I had 
been turned over since I was hit. The stretcher 

183 



TRENCHING AT GALLirOLI 

bearer thought I was delirious and continued 
working away. I thought he was crazy, and told 
him so. At last Art interrupted to say, " Just 
look at the other shoulder to satisfy him." They 
looked, and, as I knew they would, found the 
hole the bullet had entered. To get at it they 
turned me over, and I saw that a crowd had 
gathered around to watch the dressing and make 
remarks about the amount of blood. I became 
quite angry at this, and I asked them if they 
thought it was a nickel show. This caused them 
all to laugh so heartily that even I joined in. 
This was when I felt almost certain that I was 
dying. I can't remember even feeling relieved 
when they told me that the bullet had not gone 
through my heart. The pain I felt there when 
I was first hit was caused by the tearing of the 
nerves which centered in my heart when the 
bullet tore across my back from shoulder to 
shoulder. Never as long as I live shall I forget 
the solicitude of my comrades that morning. 
The stretcher bearers found that the roughly 
constructed trench was too narrow to allow the 
stretcher to turn, so they put me in a blanket 
and started away. Meanwhile the word had run 
along the trench that " Gal had copped it." I 

184 



I 



1^ 'p. % 




l.W'S 



WOUNDED 

did not know until that morning that I had so 
many friends. A little way down the trench I 
met Sergeant Manson. lie was carrying some 
sticks of chocolate for distribution among the 
men. I asked him for a piece. To do so on the 
Peninsula was like asking for gold, but he put 
it in my month with a smile. Hoddinott and 
Pike, the stretcher bearers, stopped just where 
the communication trench began. The doctor 
had come up. lie asked me where I was hit, and 
I told him. He examined the bandages, and told 
the stretcher bearers to take me along to the 
dressing station. Captain Alexander, my com- 
pany commander, came along, smiled at me, and 
wished me good-by. Hoddinott asked me if I 
wanted a cigarette, and when I said, " Yes," 
jjlaced one in my mouth and lit it for me. I 
had never realized until then just how diflflcult 
it is to smoke a cigarette without removing it 
from your mouth. Poor Stenlake, who by this 
time was worn to a shadow, was in the support 
trench, waiting with some other sick men, to go 
to hospital. He came along and said good-by. 
A Red Cross man gave me a postcard to be sent 
to some organization that would supply me with 
comforts while I was in hospital. " You '11 eat 

187 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

your Christmas diimer in London, old chap," he 
said. 

We had to go two miles before the stretcher 
bearers could exchange the blanket for the regu- 
lar stretcher. The trenches were narrow, and 
on one side a little ditch had been dug to drain 
them. The recent wet weather had made the 
bottom of the trench very slippery, and every 
few minutes one of the bearers would slide side- 
ways and bring up in the ditch. When he did 
the blanket swayed with him, and my shoulders 
struck against the jagged limestone on the sides. 
To avoid this as much as possible the bearers 
had to proceed very slowly. Those two miles to 
me seemed endless. I had now become com- 
pletely paralyzed, all control of my muscles was 
gone, and I slipped about in the blanket. Every 
few yards I would ask Hoddinott, " Is it very 
much farther?'' and every time he would turn 
around and grin cheerfully, and answer, as one 
would answer a little child, " Not very much 
farther now. Gal." 

At last we emerged into a large wide communi- 
cation trench, with the landmarks of which I was 
familiar. I was suffering severely now% and was 
beginning to worry over trifles. Suddenly it 

188 



WOUNDED 

came to me that I was still a couple of miles from 
the dressing station, and when we came out of 
the communication trench on to open ground 
that had been torn up by shrapnel, I was con- 
sumed with fear that at any moment I might be 
hit by another shell, and might not get aboard 
the hospital after all, for by this time my mind 
had centered on getting into a clean bed. A 
dozen different thoughts chased through my 
mind. I was grieved to think that in order to 
get at the wound it had been necessary to cut the 
fine great-coat that I had so much wanted to take 
home as a souvenir. I asked Hoddinott what 
they had done with it, and he told me that part 
of it was under my head as a pillow, but that it 
was so besmeared with blood that it would be 
thrown away as soon as I arrived at the dressing 
station. From thinking of the great-coat, I re- 
membered that before I went out with the dig- 
ging party I had taken off my raincoat and left 
it near my haversack in the trench, and in the 
pocket of it was the little diagram I had drawn 
of the position of the sniper I had seen the night 
before. Again I called for Hoddinott, and again 
he came, and answered me patiently and gently. 
"Yes, he would tell Art about the little dia- 

189 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

gram." Where a fringe of low bushes bordered 
the pathway at the end of the open space, Hod- 
diuott and Pike turned. For the distance of 
about a city block they carried the stretcher 
along a road cut through thick jungle. At the 
end of it stood a little post from which drooped 
a white flag with a red cross. It was the end of 
the first stage for the stretcher bearers. A great 
wave of loneliness swept over me when I realized 
that I was to see the last of the men with whom I 
had gone through so much. I was almost crying 
at the thought of leaving them there. Somehow 
or other it did not seem right for me to go. 
I felt that in some way I was taking an unfair 
advantage of them. Hoddinott and Pike slipped 
the straps from their shoulders and lowered the 
stretcher gently. Under the blanket Hoddinott 
sought my hand." " Good-by, Gal," he said. 
" Is there any message I can take back to Art? " 
" Yes," I said, " tell him to keep my raincoat." 
Since the moment I had been hit, I had been 
afraid of one thing — that I should break down, 
and not take my punishment like a man. I was 
tensely determined that no matter how much I 
suffered I would not whine or cry. In our regi- 
ment it had become a tradition that a man must 

190 



WOUNDED 

smile when he was wounded. One thing more 
than anything else kept me firm in my determina- 
tion. Art Pratt had walked just behind the 
blanket until we came to the communication 
trench. Even then he was loath to leave me. 
He could not trust himself to speak when I said, 
" Good-by, Art, old pal." He grasped my hand, 
and holding it walked along a few feet. Then 
he dropped my hand gently. There are some 
things in life that stand out ineffably sweet and 
satisfying. For me such a one was that last mo- 
ment of farewell to Art. I had always consid- 
ered him the most fearless man in a regiment 
whose name was a byword for reckless courage. 
Of all men on the Peninsula I valued his opinion 
most. No recommendation for promotion, no 
award for valor, not even the coveted V. C, could 
have been half so sweet as the few words I heard 
Art say. With eyes shining, he turned to the 
man beside him and said, almost savagely, " By 
God, he 's a brick." 



191 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOMEWARD BOUND 

AS soon as Hoddinott and Pike had left me, 
two other stretcher hearers carried me 
about two hundred yards farther to a rough 
shelter made of poles laid across supports com- 
posed of sandbags. This was the dressing sta- 
tion. On top of the poles, sandbags made it im- 
pervious to overhead shelling. On three sides 
it was closed in, but the side nearest the beach 
was open. From where my stretcher was placed 
I could just catch a glimpse of the iEgean Sea 
and of the ships. Men on stretchers were lined 
up in rows on the ground. Here and there a man 
groaned, but most of the men were gazing at the 
roof, with set faces. Some who were only slightly 
wounded were sitting up on stretchers while Red 
Cross men bandaged up their legs or feet. A 
doctor was working away methodically and rap- 
idly. A little to the right another shelter housed 
the men who were being sent to hospital with 

192 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

dysentery, enteric, or typhoid. As soon as I 
was brought in, the doctor came to me. " I '11 do 
this one right away," he said to one of his as- 
sistants. The assistant stripped the blanket 
from me and cut off the portions of the blood- 
stained shirt still remaining. As he did so, some- 
thing dropped on the ground. The Red Cross 
man picked it up. 

" Here *s the bullet that hit you," he said, 
putting it beside me on the stretcher. " It 
dropped out of your shirt. It just got through 
you and stuck in your shirtsleeve." 

" You 'd better get him a little bag to keep his 
things in," said the doctor. 

The Red Cross man produced a bag, took my 
pay book, and everything he found in my pocket, 
and put them in it, then tied them to the 
stretcher. By this time I was ready for the doc- 
tor to begin work. That doctor knew his busi- 
ness. In a very few minutes he had probed and 
cut and cleaned the wound, and adjusted a new 
bandage. The bleeding had stopped by this 
time. He asked me the circumstances of being 
hit. He told me to grip his hand and squeeze. 
I tried it with my right hand but could do noth- 
ing; then I tried the left hand and succeeded a 

193 



TKEXCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

little better. The doctor looked grave when I 
failed to grip with my right hand, but brightened 
a little when I gripped with my left. All the 
time he talked to me genially. That did me 
nearly as much good as the surgical attention he 
gave me. He was a Canadian, he told me. At the 
outbreak of the war he had been taking post- 
graduate courses at Cambridge University in 
England. The University sent several hospital 
units to the front, and he had come with this one. 
He knew Canada and the States pretty thor- 
oughly. 

" Where do you come from? " he asked me. 

" [Newfoundland," I told him. *' But I live in 
the United States." 

"What part?" he asked. 

" Cambridge, Massachusetts," I told him. 

" Oh," he said, "' that 's where Harvard Uni- 
versity is." 

" Yes," I said, " I was a student there when I 
enlisted." 

The doctor called to a couple of the Red Cross 
men. " Here *s a chap from Harvard Univer- 
sity in Cambridge, over in the United States." 
The two Red Cross men came and told me they 
were students at Cambridge. They talked to me 

194 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

for quite a little while. Before tliev left me to 
attend to some more wounded, they made me 
promise to ask to be sent to Cambridge, England, 
to hospital. The University had established a 
very large and thoroughly equipped hospital 
there. All I had to do, they said, was tell the 
people that I had been a student at the other 
Cambridge, and I should be an honored guest. 
They persisted in calling Harvard, Cambridge, 
and when they went away said that they were 
overjoyed to have seen a man from the sister 
university. 

The doctor came back in a few minutes. 

"How are vou feeling now? " he said. 

" I feel pretty well now," I answered, " but it 's 
very close in here with all these wounded men, 
and the place smells of chloroform. Can't I be 
moved outside? " 

" I '11 move you outside if you say so,'' said 
the doctor, ■• but you *re taking a chance. Occa- 
sionally a stray shell comes over this way. The 
Turks are trying to locate a battery close to this 
place. Sometimes a shell bursts prematurely, 
and drops around here." 

On the Peninsula, officers who gave men leave 
to go on dangerous missions salved their con- 

195 



TKEyCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

sciences bv first warning the men that in doing 
it '• they were taking a cliauoe." The caution 
had come to mean nothing. 

" All right, doctor," I said. *• I "11 take a 
chance." 

Two stretcher bearers came, and lifted me out- 
side the shelter, where the wind blew, fresh and 
invigorating. Just as they turned. I heard the 
old familiar shriek that signaled the coming of a 
shell. It burst almost overhead. Most of the 
missiles it contained dropped on the other side 
of the shelter, but a few tiny pieces flew in my 
direction. Three of them hit me in the right 
arm, a fourth lauded in my leg. 

" Is anybody hit ? "' yelled a Red Cross man. 
whose accent proclaimed him as an inhabitant 
of the country north of the Clyde. 

" I 've got a couple of splinters," I said. 

I was lifted inside quickly. The Scotchman 
who put on some bandages on the little cuts 
looked at me accusingly. 

" Ye were warned, before ye went," he said. 
" Ye desairved it. But then." he added. " ye 
might hae got it worse. Ye 're lucky ye did not 
get it in the guts." 

After a little while my arms and back began 
196 



HOMEWARD BOUXD 

to ache violeutly. Two Red Cross meu came 
along and inoTed me to another shelter simihir to 
the first. This was the clearing station. From 
here motor ambnlances carried the wonnded to 
the shore. I knew from the hnrriug speech of 
the big sergeant in charge that he hailed 
from Scotland. I asked him where he came 
from, nnd he told me that he came from Inver- 
ness. 

" Onr regiment trained near there for a while,"^ 
I said. " They garrisoned Fort George." 

" Ye 11 no" be meanin' the Seaforth Highland- 
ers, laddie." said he. 

'• Xo, I said. " we 're Xewfonndlanders. the 
First Xewfonndlaud Regiment." 

" Oh. I ken ve well, noo." he said, gloomily. 
" Ye 're a bad lot : it took six policemen to ar- 
rest one o' your mob. On the Peninsula they 
call ye the Xever Failing Little Darlings." After 
that he thawed quite a little. '• I "11 look at your 
wound noo. ladtlie." he said, after a few minutes. 
" Ye 're awfu' light, laddie." he said as he raised 
me. " Puir laddie." he added, pityingly. *' Puir 
laddie. Ye 're stairred. I *11 get ye Queen 
Mary's ration." 

" "^Tiat 's Queen Mary's ration? " I asked. 
197 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

" ' T 's Queen Mary's gift to the wounded. 
I '11 get it for ye right away." He went outside 
the clearing station and returned in a few min- 
utes with a cup of warm malted milk. " ' T will 
help 3'e some till ye get aboard the hospital ship. 
Here *s the ambulance noo." 

A fleet of motor ambulances swayed over the 
uneven gTOund and rolled up close to the clearing 
station. The drivers and helpers began loading 
the stretchers aboard and one by one started 
a\\'ay. Before I was put into one, the big Scotch- 
man took a large syringe and injected a strong 
dose of morphia into my chest. 

" Ye '11 find it hard," he said, " bumping over 
the hill, but ye' 11 soon be all right and com- 
fortable." 

" Tell me," I said, " shall I get into a real bed 
on the ship? " 

He laughed. " Sure ye will, laddie. The best 
bed ye 've had since ye 've been in the airmy. 
Good luck to ye, laddie." 

Each of the motor ambulances carried four 
men, two above and two below. I was put on 
top, and the door flap pulled over. We jolted 
and pitched and swayed. Once we turned short 
and skidded at a curve. I knew just the very 

198 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

place, although it was dark in the ambulance. I 
had gone over the road often with ration parties. 
Fortunately the morphia was beginning to take 
effect, and dulled the pain to some extent. At 
last the ambulance stopped, somebody pulled 
the curtain back, and we were lifted out. We 
were on West Beach. A pier ran out into the 
sea. A man-o'-war launch towing a string of 
boats glided in near enough to let her first boat 
come close to the pier. The breeze was quite 
fresh, and made me shiver. The stretchers were 
laid across the boats, close to each other. Soon 
all the boats were filled. I could see the man on 
the stretcher to the right of me, but the one on 
the other side I could not see. I tried to turn 
my head but could not. The eyes of the man 
next me were large with pain. I smiled at him, 
but instead of smiling back at me, his lip curled 
resentfully, and he turned over on his side 
so that he could face away from me. As he did, 
the blanket slipped from his shoulder, and I saw 
on his shoulder strap the star of a second lieu- 
tenant. I had committed the unpardonable sin. 
I had smiled at an officer as if I had been an 
equal, forgetting that he was not made of common 
clay. Once after that, when he turned his head, 

199 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

his eyes met mine disdainfully. That time I did 
not smile, I have often laughed at the incident 
since, but there on that boat I was boiling with 
rage. Not a word had passed between us, but 
his expression in turning away had been elo- 
quent. I cursed him and the system that pro- 
duced him, and swore that never again would I 
put on a uniform. Gradually I calmed down; 
the morphia had got in its work. In a little 
while I had sunk into a comatose condition. I 
remember, in a hazy sort of way, being taken 
aboard a large lighter. There were tiers of 
stretchers on both sides. This time I was in the 
lower tier, and was wondering how soon the man 
above me would fall on me. At last I went 
to sleep. When I awoke, I was alone and in mid- 
air. All about me was black. By that time I 
was completely paralyzed from the waist up. I 
could see only directly above my head. It was 
night, and the sky was dotted with twinkling 
stars. I could feel no movement, but the stars 
came slowly nearer and nearer. " What was I 
doing here in mid-air?" Subconsciously I 
thought of the body of Mohammed, suspended 
between earth and heaven. Now I felt I had hit 
on the answer. I was going to heaven, and the 

200 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

thought was very comforting. Suddenly the 
stars stopped, and after a pause began receding. 
A face appeared above me, then the head and 
shoulders of a man dressed in the uniform of a 
naval officer. This suggested something else to 
me. The officers of the Flying Corps wear naval 
uniforms. I decided that while I was asleep I 
had been transferred to the Flying Corps. 

" Hello, old chap," said the naval officer. 
" Do you know where you are? " 

" No,'' I said. " Am I going to heaven, or have 
I joined the Flying Corps?" 

" No," said the officer. " You 're on the 
stretcher being hoisted aboard the hospital ship." 

Two big, strapping, bronzed sailors approached 
and lifted the stretcher on to an elevator; they 
stepped on and the elevator descended. We 
stopped at the end of a short white-walled pas- 
sage-way, lighted by electricity. The sailors 
grasped the stretcher as lightly as if it had been 
empty, walked along to the end of the passage- 
way into a ward. It had formerly been a dining 
saloon. Large square windows looked out upon 
the sea, everything was white and clean and or- 
derly. After the dirt and filth of the Peninsula 
it was like a beautiful dream. The sailors lifted 

201 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

me gently into a bed and stood there waiting for 
orders from the nurse. As I looked at them I 
thought of our boys standing in the trenches 
during a bombardment and yelling, " Come on, 
the navy," and I murmured, " Come on, the 
navy ; " and then when I looked at the calm, self- 
possessed, capable-looking nursing sister, moving 
about amongst the wounded, I said, and never 
had it meant so much to me, " Good old Britain." 

The string of boats in which I had come was 
the batch that filled the quota of the patients of 
the hospital ship. In about half an hour she 
began to move. An orderly came around with 
meals. The doctor came in after a little while 
and began examining the patients. From some 
part of the ship not far from where I was came 
the sound of voices singing hymns. It was the 
last touch needed to emphasize the difference be- 
tween the hospital ship and the Peninsula. Sun- 
day evening on the Peninsula had meant no more 
than any other. The ship moved along so quietly 
that she seemed scarcely to stir. The doctor and 
the nurse worked noiselessly; over everything 
hung the spirit of Sabbath calm. Gallipoli 
might have been as far away as Mars. 

It must have been about nine o'clock when an 
202 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

orderly came around and turned out all the 
lights except a reading lamp over the desk where 
the night sister sat. All that night I could not 
sleep. About midnight the night sister gave me 
a sleeping draught, but it did no good. I was 
suffering the most intense pain, but I was so glad 
to be away from the dirt of the trenches that I 
felt nothing else counted. The next day I was 
a great deal weaker, and could scarcely talk. 
AYhen the doctor came around to dress my 
wounds, I could only smile at him. All that day 
the sister came to my bed at frequent intervals. 
I was too weak then to eat. Two or three times 
she gave me some sort of broth through a little 
feeding bowl. In the evening I had sunk into 
apathy. The sister sent for the doctor. He 
came, felt my pulse, took my temperature, then 
turned and whispered to the sister. She called 
an orderly, and I heard her say, " Bring the 
screens for this man." The orderly went away 
and in a few minutes returned with tw^o screens 
large enough to entirely conceal my bed. When 
the screens had been put in position, the sister 
came in, wiped my mouth and forehead, and went 
away. On the other side of the screen I heard 
her speaking softly to the doctor. The w^hole 

205 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

thing seemed to me something entirely apart 
from me, I felt that I was watching a scene 
in a play, and that I found it of little interest. 
After about an hour the doctor and the sister 
came in again. 

" Feeling all right, old man? " said the doctor. 

" Yes," I said. " Fine." 

" Sister," said the doctor, " give this man any- 
thing he wants." 

The sister bent over me. She was a woman 
between thirty and thirty-five, of the type that 
inspires confidence; every word and movement 
reflected poise, and there was a calmness and se- 
renity about her that you knew she could have 
acquired only as a result of having seen and eased 
much human suffering. 

" If there is anything you would care to have, 
please ask for it, and if it is at all possible we 
will get it for you," she said, in a softly modu- 
lated voice, with the slightest suspicion of a 
drawl ; it was the voice of a cultivated English- 
woman; after the Peninsula, a woman's voice 
was like a tonic. 

'^ Yes," I said, " I want chicken and wine." 

I had not the slightest desire for chicken and 
wine just then, but I felt that I had to ask for 

206 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

something, and the best I could think of was 
chicken and wine. She smiled at me, went away, 
and in about fifteen minutes she returned with a 
little tray. She had brought the chicken and 
wine. She had minced up the chicken, and she 
fed me little pieces of it with a spoon. In a little 
cup with a spout she had the wine. When I had 
eaten a little of the chicken, she put the spout 
between my lips ; I had expected some port wine, 
but when I tasted, it was champagne. I drank 
it to the very last drop. 

" How do you feel now? " said the sister. 

'' Never felt better,'' I answered. 

" That 's very nice," she said. " I hope you '11 
get to sleep soon." 

Then she went away, and in a few minutes the 
night sister came on. She peeped in at me, 
smiled, and went away. All that night I looked 
up at a tiny spot on the ceiling. In the board 
directly above my eyes, there was a curious knot. 
A little flaw ran across the center of it. It re- 
minded me of a postman carrying his bag of let- 
ters. It seemed to me that night that I could 
stand the pain no longer. My back seemed to be 
tearing apart, as if a man was pulling on each 
shoulder, trying to separate them from the spine. 

207 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

I tried to jump up from the bed but could not 
move a muscle. I felt that it would be better to 
tear my back apart myself at once and have it 
over, but when I tried to move my arms I found 
them useless. It must have been well into the 
morning when the night sister came around 
again. The doctor was with her. He had a 
large syringe in his hand. He said nothing. 
Neither did I. I closed my eyes. I wanted to 
be alone. I felt him open my shirt at the neck 
and rub some liquid on my chest. I opened my 
eyes. He was putting the needle of the long 
syringe into my chest where he had rubbed it 
with iodine. The skin was leathery and at first 
the needle would not penerate. At last it went 
in with a rush. It seemed at least a foot long. 
He rubbed another spot, and plunged the needle 
in a second time. " We 've got to get him 
asleep," he said to the night sister. " If he 's 
not asleep in an hour, call me again." Very soon 
a drowsiness crept over me. Nothing seemed to 
matter. I wanted to rest. In a short time I 
was asleep. When I woke, it was broad daylight. 
The day sister was standing by my bed, smiling. 
She turned around and beckoned to some one. 

208 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

The doctor came close to the bed, felt my pulse, 
took my temperature again, and smiled. '' Quite 
all right, sister," he said. 

An orderly came in, lifted me up in bed, 
washed my face and hands, and brought in a tray 
with chicken. There was the same little feeding 
cup. This time it had port wine in it. The or- 
derly propped me up in bed, putting cushions 
carefully behind my back and shoulders. The 
sister and the doctor superintended while he was 
doing it. Lifting a wounded man is a science. 
An unskilful person, no matter how well inten- 
tioned, may sometimes do incalculable damage. 
Putting a strain on the wrong muscle may undo 
the work of the doctor. I could see out one of 
the large windows now, and I noticed that we 
were passing a good many ships, mostly vessels of 
war. They seemed to increase in number every 
few minutes; and by the time I had finished 
breakfast, we were in the midst of a forest of 
funnels and rigging. Soon the engines stopped. 
When the doctor came arouud to dress my back, 
I asked him where we were. 

" We 're in Alexandria, now," he said. " In an 
hour's time we '11 have unloaded. You 're the 

209 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

last patient to be dressed. We 're doing you last 
so that you won't have so long to wait before the 
bandages are changed." 

" Doctor," I asked, " how long will it be be- 
fore this wound gets better? " 

" I don't know," he said. " It 's impossible to 
tell until you 've been X-rayed. Last night we 
were certain you were dying, but this morning 
you are perfectly normal." 

In a short time the ward filled with men from 
the shore, landing officers, orderlies with mes- 
sages, sergeants in charge of ambulance cor^DS, 
and an army of stretcher bearers. The orderlies 
of the hospital ship began putting out the kits of 
the wounded at the foot of their beds. The dis- 
embarkation began as soon as the doctor bad com- 
pleted his dressing. I was propped up in bed, 
and could see a long line cf motor ambulances 
on the pier. The less seriously wounded cases 
were taken off first. The sister told me that 
these were going by train to Cairo. Those who 
could not stand the train journey were going to 
different hospitals in Alexandria. I was to go 
to Alexandria, she said. A middle-aged man 
passed us on a stretcher. He was hit in the leg, 
and sat on the stretcher, smiling contentedly, 

210 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

and looking about him interestedly. When he 
saw the sister, his eyes lighted up. 

" Good-by, sister/' he shouted. " I '11 see you 
again, the next time I 'm wounded." 

The sister returned his good-by. Then she 
turned to me, and said : " That man was on the 
hospital train that left Antwerp the day the 
Germans shelled it in 1914. When he came in 
the other night I did n't recognize him, but he re- 
membered me." 

While I waited for my turn the sister told 
me that she had been in the first batch of nurses 
to cross the Channel at the beginning of the war. 
She had been in the hospitals in Belgium that 
were shelled by the Germans. At eight o'clock 
in the morning she had left Antwerp on the last 
hospital train, and at nine o'clock the Germans 
occupied the town. She had been on different 
hospital ships and trains ever since. Once only 
had she had a rest. That was some time in the 
summer of 1915. She expected a week off in 
London at Christmas, when the ship she was now 
attached to laid up for repairs. The boat I was 
on, she said, carried ordinarily seven hundred 
and fifty wounded. At present she carried nine 
hundred. They generally arrived in Suvla Bay 

211 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

in the morning, and left that night, filled with 
wounded. At the time of the first lauding at 
Anzac an hour after the assault began they 
left with twelve hundred wounded Australians. 
The sisters were sent out from a central 
depot in England, and went to the various fronts. 
When the stretcher bearers came to take me 
away, the sister gathered up my belongings in 
a little bag, tied it to the stretcher, put a 
pillow under my head, and nodded a bright 
good-by. 

The stretcher bearers, two stalwart Austra- 
lians, took me to the elevator, across the deck, 
and out onto the pier. It was now getting to- 
ward evening. A lady stopped the stretcher be- 
tween the pier and the ambulance, and handed 
one of the bearers a little white packet contain- 
ing a towel, soap, tooth-brush and tooth-powder. 
Without waiting to be thanked she went on 
to intercept another stretcher. The stretcher 
bearer put the package under my pillow. 
" Ready, Bill," said one of the bearers with the 
nasal twang of the Bushman. " Lift away," said 
Bill, and they lifted the stretcher up on the top 
tier of the ambulance wagon, without stepping 
up from the ground. They did it with the same 

212 



I("i^1« 




HOMEWARD BOUND 

motion as when two men swing a bag of grain. 
But it was not in tlie least uncomfortable for me. 
These Australian stretcher bearers who meet the 
incoming hospital ships are amazingly strong. 
There is an easy gracefulness in the way they 
swing along with a stretcher that makes you 
trust them. I was the last man to go in that am- 
bulance wagon, and in a few minutes we were 
whirling smoothly along good roads amid the 
familiar smells of Egyptian bazaars. This am- 
bulance drive was a good deal different from 
the one on the Peninsula just after I had been 
wounded. After about half an hour the ambu- 
lance swerved off the smooth asphalt road onto a 
gravel road, slowed down, and ran into a yard. 
The Australians reappeared, opened the flaps, 
and began unloading. We were in the square of 
a large hospital. All around us were buildings. 
A fine-looking, bronzed man, with the uniform 
of a colonel, was directing some Sikhs who were 
carrying the stretchers from the ambulances into 
the ditferent buildings. All the stretchers were 
lying on the ground in a long row. As soon as 
each one was inspected by the colonel, he told 
the stretcher bearers where to take it. When he 
came to mine, he said, " Dangerously wounded, 

215 



TKENCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

Ward three. Then, to the stretcher bearers, 
" Careful, very careful." 

Ward three was a long ward with stone floor 
and plaster walls; it contained about fifty beds. 
More than half of the beds had little " cradles " 
at the foot; when I came to know hospitals, I 
learned that these were to prevent the bedclothes 
from irritating wounded legs. In a few min- 
utes a doctor came around, gave orders, and the 
night sister began bandaging up the wounds of 
the men who had come in. The sister who ar- 
ranged my bandages was Scotch, and the burr of 
her speech was pleasant in my ears. She came 
back about ten o'clock and gave me a sleeping 
potion. The change from the hospital ship must 
have been too much excitement for me, because 
I could not get asleep that night. But I did 
not feel as I had felt on the hospital ship. I 
have very seldom experienced such joy as I did 
that night when I found that I could move my 
head. I did it very slowly, and with great pain, 
and rested a long time before I tried to 
turn it back again. The door was right oppo-^ 
site my bed. I could see the sand shining white 
in the moonlight in the square, and right ahead 
of me a large marquee where, I found out later, 

216 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

some of the convalescent men slept. A man 
about four beds away from mine was dying. 
When I had first come in he had been groaning 
at intervals, but now he was silent. About one 
or two o'clock an orderly came running softly 
in rubber-soled shoes to tell the sister that the 
man had died. Half an hour later two men with 
a particularly long stretcher, appeared in the 
ward. They stepped quietly, trying not to dis- 
turb the sleepers. I saw them walk along to the 
bed of the dead man, and go in behind the screen. 
After a litle while the ward orderly moved the 
screens back, and the stretcher bearers reap- 
peared. Over the burden on the stretcher was 
draped a Union Jack. Often after that while I 
was in Ward three I saw the same soft-step- 
ping men come in at night and depart silently 
with the flag-draped stretcher. Many of the 
wounded left the ward in that way, but their 
places were soon filled by incoming wounded. 

The first morning I was in Ward three the doc- 
tor ordered me to be X-rayed. The X-ray ap- 
paratus was in another building. To get to it 
I had to pass through the square. The sun was 
too hot in the morning for us to cross the square. 
We therefore skirted it under the shade of the 

217 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

long portico that runs along the outside of nearly 
all buildings in Egypt. In beds outside the 
building were men with dysentery. At the cor- 
ner of the square a plank gangway led to the 
quarters of the enteric patients. Just before I 
reached the X-ray room, a man hailed me from 
one of the beds. It was Tom Smythe, a boy I 
had known since I was able to walk. All the 
time I had been on the Peninsula I had not seen 
him, nor had I heard any news of him. On the 
way back from the X-ray room, the stretcher 
bearers stopped near his bed while I talked with 
him. He had been in the hospital about two 
weeks, he said, and hoped to get to England on 
the next boat. He promised to come to see me 
in my ward as soon as he was allowed up. The 
next day he came, although he was not supposed 
to be up, and brought with him a chap named 
Varuey. Varney had been in the section next 
mine at Stob's Camp in Scotland, he told me. 
Smythe and Varney vied with each other after 
that in trying to make me comfortable. To me 
that has always been the most remarkable thing 
about our regiment: their loyalty to a com- 
rade in trouble. I have known Newfoundlanders 
to fight with each other, using every weapon from 

218 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

profanity to tent mallets while in camp; on the 
Peninsula I have seen these same men carrying 
each other's packs, digging dugouts, and taking 
the other man's fatigue work. Varney was very 
much distressed to see the condition I was in. 
He knew I was fond of reading, and searched all 
over the place for books and magazines. Once 
he brought me three American magazines, one 
Saturday Evening Post and two Munseij's. 
They were nearly two years old, but I read them 
as eagerly as if they had just been published. 
During the six weeks I was in hospital in Alex- 
andria, I improved wonderfully. The doctor in 
charge of the ward took a special interest in my 
progress, and seemed to pride himself on hav- 
ing handled the case successfully. Every day 
or so he brought in a doctor from some other 
ward to show him my wounds and the X-ray 
plates. He was very careful and tried in dress- 
ing to cause me as little pain as possible. " Poor 
old chap," he would say, when he saw^ me -^ince, 
" poor old chap." I think there was a great deal 
of psychology in my getting well. In this Twen- 
ty-first General Hospital nothing w^as omitted 
that could make one comfortable. Every morn- 
ing an orderly washed me. The orderlies were 

219 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

all very considerate, except one. ELe did not last 
very long in our ward. He began washing the 
patients at four o'clock in the morning. He al- 
ways made me think of a hostler washing a car- 
riage. When he had washed my arms he always 
let them drop in a way that reminded me of the 
shafts of a wagon. He was soon replaced by a 
chap who did not begin his work until seven. 
At eight we had breakfast : fruit, cereal, and eggs. 
At eleven we had soda water and crackers or 
sweet biscuits. At one came dinner: soup, 
chicken, and vegetables, half a chicken to each 
man, with a dessert of pudding or custard. At 
four we had tea, with fish, and at eight came 
supper: cocoa and bread and butter, with jelly. 
In the morning visitors came in and brought us 
the daily papers. Sisters of the V. A. D. — Vol- 
untary Aid Detachment — came in each afternoon 
to relieve the regular nursing sisters. They 
were mostly Englishwomen resident in Egypt. 
Most of their men folks were at one of the fronts. 
They read to the men who could not hold books 
in their hands, talked to us cheerfully, and wrote 
letters for us. Some of them brought us little 
delicacies: grapes and chocolate. Men in hos- 
pital have no money. Any money they have is 

220 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

taken av/ay when they arrive and refunded when 
they leave. Like most of the rules in the army 
to-day, this was made for the old regulars. 
When the regulars felt they needed a rest they 
went into hospital; the only way they could be 
stopped was to keep all their money away from 
them. To-day two million men suffer as a result. 
Ever since the day I left the Peninsula I had 
wanted chocolate. But I had no money, and for 
a long time I had to go without it. At last 
young Varney got me some. He had gone er- 
rands for a wounded Australian, who had been 
given some money from outside, and the Aus- 
tralian had given him some ; he could hardly wait 
to get to me with it. 

As soon as a man was suflQciently recovered to 
travel, he was sent to England. New men were 
always coming in to take the places of the old. 
A lot of them were Australians. I kept asking 
them all as they came in if they could tell me 
anything of my friend White George. Of course 
a nickname is very little to go on. A man who 
was White George in one part of the trench might 
be Queensland Harry in another. All I knew 
about him was that he was in the Fifteenth 
Battalion, and that he had a beard. At last a 

221 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

chap did come in one evening from the Fifteenth 
Battalion. I was in bed at the time, and 
could not get a chance to ask him about White 
George. The next day the poor chap was writh- 
ing and screaming in the terrible spasms of tet- 
anus, and for two days the screens were around 
his bed. On the third day he was better. As 
soon as Varney came in, he wheeled me up to the 
Australian's bed. I asked him what was the 
matter with him, and he told me that he had a 
flesh wound in the head that did n't bother him, 
but that his left leg was off at the knee. 

"Are you from the Fifteenth Battalion?" I 
asked. 

" Yes," he said. 

" Do you know a chap in that battalion," I 
said, " that they call White George? " 

The wounded Australian looked at me in a 
quizzical way. Then he drawled slowly, " Well, 
I think I do. Why, damn it, man, I 'm White 
George." 

Then he recognized me. " Why, it 's the New- 
foundland Corporal. Hello, Corporal. You 're 
just the man I wanted to see," he said. " I 
stood on that bomb all right, and got away with 
it — once. W^hen I tried it a second time, I put 

222 



HOMEWAKD BOUND 

the bomb on the firing platform, and when I 
stepped on it, my head was over the parapet; 
Johnny Turk got me in the head, and the bomb 
did the rest." 

" Don't you wish now you had n't tried the ex- 
periment? " I said. 

" No," said White George, " I feel perfectly 
satisfied." 

" By the way," I said, as I was leaving him, 
" why do they call you White George? Your 
hair is dark." 

" My real name," he said, " is George White, 
but on the regimental roll it reads ' White, 
George.' " 



223 



CHAPTER IX 

" FEENISH " 

IT must have been about the sixth week that 
I was iu Egypt that one of the Australians 
came over to my bed and told me that my name 
was on the list of men to go to England by the 
next boat. I was allowed up for two hours in 
the afternoon ; and when I got up I looked at the 
list, and found my name there. An orderly from 
the stores came in and asked me for a list of 
clothing I needed. He came back in about an 
hour with a complete uniform and kit. The sis- 
ter told me that I was to go to England the next 
morning. At ten o'clock the next day I was 
taken out to the little clearing station in the 
square, and put in With a lot of other men on 
stretchers. An officer came around and in- 
spected our kits. A little later a sergeant from 
the pay office gave each man an advance of 
twelve shillings. After that the loading began. 
A line of about twenty ambulances filed out of 

224 



"FEENISH" 

the yard and through the malodorous byways of 
Alexandria to the waterfront. Here we were 
put aboard the hospital ship Rewa, an old rocky 
tub that had been an Indian troopship before the 
war. I learned this from an old English regu- 
lar in the stretcher next me. He had seen her 
often before, and had made a trip from England 
to India in her once. The Rewa was so full of 
men that the latest arrivals had to go on deck in 
hammocks. The thought of a trip across the Bay 
of Biscay as deck passenger on the Rewa was not 
very attractive, but our fears on this point were 
soon allayed by one of the ship's oflflcers. We 
were not going to England on the Rewa, he said. 
We were going to Lemnos Island, and in Mudros 
Bay we should transship into the Aquitania. 
When we had cleared Alexandria Harbor, the 
wind had freshened considerably. All that night 
and the next day we pitched and rolled heavily. 
The second night, when we had expected to reach 
Mudros Bay, we were still twenty-four hours 
away from it. Canvas sheets had to be rigged 
above the bulwarks to prevent the spray from 
drenching the men in the stretchers on deck. 
The next day a good many men were sea sick, 
and it was not till the next evening that the storm 

225 



TKEXCHIXG AT GALLIPOLI 

abated. Even then it was too rough to get close 
to the big ship. We did try to get near her once, 
and succeeded in getting oue hawser fast, but the 
wind and tide drove us so hard against her, that 
the captain of the Aquitania would take no more 
risks and ordered us off. We had to lay to all 
that evening, and the next morning. At noon 
the wind died down enough to begin the trans- 
shipment from the smaller ships. We waited 
while seven other hospital ships transferred their 
human freight, and then moved up near enough 
to put gangways between the two boats. The 
change was effected very expeditiously. We 
were soon transferred, and settled in our new 
quarters. I was in a ward with some Australian 
troops on the top deck. Board petitions had 
been run up from it to the promenade deck, mak- 
ing a long bright, well ventilated corridor. 
There was only one drawback on the Aquitania. 
The sister in charge of our ward did not like 
Colonials, and made it pretty plain. She was 
rather a superior person who did not like to dress 
wounds. We were to make two stops before we 
arrived in England, I was told ; one at Salonica 
to take on some sick, the other at Naples for 
coal. The Salonica stop took place at night. 

226 



"FEENISH" 

We did not go into the harbor; probably it was 
not deep enough for the Aquitania. The sick 
were taken aboard outside. We came to Naples 
early one fine Sunday morning. As we went into 
the harbor, I could see through the window Mt. 
Vesuvius, smoking steadily. We were in Naples 
at the same time as the big Olympic, and the 
Mauretania, the sister ship of the Lusitania. It 
was the time that the Germans had protested 
that the British hospital ships carried troops to 
the Dardanelles on the return trip. The neutral 
consuls in Naples went aboard the Olympic and 
Mauretania that Sunday and investigated. The 
charge, of course, was unfounded. An Italian 
general and his staff came aboard our ship and 
were shown around the wards. He was a dapper 
little man, who gesticulated vehemently and 
bowed to all the sisters. . The sister who did not 
like Colonials was speaking to him when he came 
through our ward. She was trying to impress 
him with the excellent treatment our wounded 
received. She pointed out each man to him, in 
the same way a keeper does at the zoological gar- 
dens. 

" They get this every evening," she said, indi- 
cating the supper we were eating. " And what 

227 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

is this? " she said, looking at some apricot jam 
on a saucer on my bed. 

"Apricot jam, sister," I said, then added 
sweetly, in my best society fashion, " We get it 
every evening." I might have told her that I 
had had it not only every evening, but every noon 
and morning while I was on the Peninsula. 

" And what is this? " she said, pointing to the 
cup in my hand. " Is it tea or cocoa? " 

" It 's tea," I said. " We get it every even- 
ing, — just as if we were human beings, and 
not Colonials." After that I think she liked Co- 
lonials even less. 

The Bay of Biscay was just a little rough when 
we went through it, but it did not affect the 
Aquitania very much. 

When the word went around on the day that 
land had been sighted, every man that could 
hobble went on deck to get a first glimpse of 
England. We could not see very far because of 
the thick mist of an English December. About 
ten o'clock we were at the entrance to South- 
ampton, but the tide was out, or the chief engi- 
neer was out, so we could not go up until that 
evening. That last day was a tedious one. 
Every one was eager to get ashore. To most of 

228 



"FEENISH" 

the men, England was home; and after the 
trenches and the hospitals, home meant much. 

As soon as we landed, a train took us to a 
place near London, It was twenty-five miles 
from the hospital that was our destination. 
Here we were met by automobiles that took us 
to the hospital for Newfoundlanders at Wands- 
worth Common, London. There were only half 
a dozen of us from Newfoundland. At first the 
doctor on the Aquitania persisted in calling us 
Canadians, and wanted to send us to Walton-on- 
Thames. It took us two hours to convince him 
that Newfoundland had no connection with Can- 
ada. Two automobiles were enough for our lit- 
tle party. The man w^ho drove me in told me 
that he had come a hundred miles to do it. All 
the automobiles that met the hospital trains were 
loaned by people who wanted to do whatever they 
could to help the cause. He was a dairy farmer, 
he said, and gave me uninteresting statistical in- 
formation about cows and the amount of milk he 
sold in London each day. But apart from that, 
I enjoyed the smooth drive over the faultless 
roads. 

The Third London hospital at Wandsworth 
Common is a military hospital ; and although the 

229 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

discipline is strict, everything possible is done 
for the comfort of the patients. Concerts are 
given every few evenings ; almost every afternoon 
people send around automobiles to take the 
wounded men for a drive. Twice a week visitors 
come in for three hours in the afternoon. At 
Wandsworth I stayed only a very few days. 
Two days before Christmas I was sent to Esher 
to the convalescent home run by the Y. A, D. 
Sisters. Nobody at this hospital received any 
remuneration. Esher is in Surrey, not many 
miles from London. Even in the winter the 
weather was pleasant. Here we had a great 
deal of liberty, being allowed out all day until 
six at night. Only thirty men were in Esher at 
one time. The hospital contained a piano, vic- 
trola, pool table, and materials for playing all 
sorts of games. At Esher one felt like an indi- 
vidual, and not like a cog in a machine. Paddy 
Walsh, the corporal, who had hesitated so long 
about leaving me on the Peninsula, was at Esher 
when I arrived. He was almost well now, he 
told me, and was looking forward to a furlough. 
After his furlough he was going back, he said, in 
the first draft. " No forming fours for me, 
around Scotland," said Walsh, " drilling a bunch 

230 



"FEENISH'' 

of rookies. I want to get back witli the boys." 
After two weeks, Eslier closed for repairs. 
We all went back to the hospital at Wandsworth. 
News had just come of the evacuation of the 
Peninsula. In the ward I was sent to were half 
a dozen of our boys. I asked them what was the 
trouble, and they told me frozen feet. " Frozen 
feet,'' I said, "in Gallipoli? You're joking." 
They assured me that they were not and referred 
me to their case sheets that hung beside the beds. 
Shortly before the evacuation a storm had swept 
over the Peninsula. First it had rained for two 
days, the third day it snowed, and the next it 
froze. A torrent of water had poured down the 
mountain side, flooding the trenches, and carry- 
ing with it blankets, equipments, rifles, portions 
of the parapet, and the dead bodies of men who 
had been drowned while they were sleeping. 
The men who were left had to forsake their 
trenches and go above ground. Turks and Brit- 
ish alike suffered. The last day of the storm, 
while some of our men were waiting on the beach 
to be taken to the hospital ship, they told me they 
saw the bodies of at least two thousand men, 
frozen to death. Our regiment stood it perhaps, 
better than any of the others. It was the sort 

231 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

of climate tliej were accustomed to. The Aus- 
tralasians sullered tremendously. I met one 
man who had been on the Peninsula during the 
evacuation. They had got away with the loss of 
two men killed and one wounded for the entire 
British force. The papers that day said that the 
Turks claimed to have driven the entire British 
army into the sea, and to have gained an immense 
amount of booty. The booty gained, our men 
said, was bully beef and biscuits. Far from 
being driven into the sea, the British got off in 
two hours without the Turks suspecting at all; 
and it was not till the second day after that the 
Turks really found out. It had taken a great 
deal of ingenuity to devise a scheme that would 
let the evacuation take place secretly. The dis- 
tance from the shore was about four miles. As 
soon as the troops knew they were to leave, they 
ripped up the sand bags on the parapets, and 
broke the glass in the periscopes, so they would 
be useless to the enemy. Then they attached the 
broken periscopes to the parapets, so that the 
Turks looking over would see the periscopes 
above the trench, just as they would any ordinary 
day at the front. Only one problem remained 
unsolved. As soon as the Turks heard the firing 

232 



"FEENISH" 

cease entirely, they would think something was 
not as it should be. If they began to investigate 
before the troops got away, it might mean an- 
nihilation. At first it was planned to leave a 
small party scattered through the trenches, but 
this meant that they would have to be sacrificed 
in order to allow their comrades to escape. An 
Australian devised a scheme. He took a number 
of rifles, placed them at different points along 
the parapest, and lashed them to it. In each 
one he put a cartridge. From the trigger he sus- 
pended a bully beef tin, weighted with sand. 
This was not quite heavy enough to pull the 
trigger. On top of the rifle he placed another 
tin, filled with water, and pierced a small hole 
in the bottom of it. After a while the water, 
dripping slowly from the top tin, made the lower 
one heavy enough to pull the trigger. Some of 
the tins were heavier than the others, and the 
rifles did not all go off at once. As soon as 
things w^ere ready, the troops moved off silently, 
" Just as if they were going into dugouts,'' Art 
Pratt wrote me. They got aboard the warships 
waiting for them in the bay, and went to Mud- 
ros and Imbros. The evacuation was facilitated 
by the fact that the Salt Lake that had been 

233 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

dried up when I was there was swollen high by 
the rain of the previous weeks. All that night 
the firing continued at intervals, and kept up all 
through the next day. The Turks, taking the 
usual cautious survey of the enemy trenches, saw, 
as they did every other da}', periscopes sticking 
up over the parapets and heard the ordinary re- 
ports of rifle fire ; to them it looked like what the 
official reports call a " quiet day on the Eastern 
front." 

One other item of news I received that pleased 
me very greatly. Art Pratt had taken my place 
as corporal of the section, and had sent me word 
that he had got the sniper who shot me. 

After I had been back in the Wandsworth 
Common hospital a few days, I was " boarded." 
That is, I was sent up to be examined by a board 
of doctors. They found me " unfit for further 
service," and I was sent to my depot in Scotland 
for disposal. The next day I was given all my 
back pay and took the train for Ayr, Scotland. 
There I was given my discharge " in consequence 
of wounds received in action in Gallipoli." 
Major Whitaker, the officer in charge, paused and 
looked at me, while he was signing the discharge 
paper. 

234 



"FEENISH" 

" I imagine/' he said, " you feel rather sorry 
that you caught that train, Corporal." 

" What train is that, sir? " I said. 

" The one at Aldershot," he answered, as he 
completed his signature. I smiled noncommit- 
tally, but did not answer him. 

Looking back now it seems to me that catch- 
ing that train is one thing I have never regretted. 
I was convinced of it that day in Ayr. For a 
few weeks past convalescents of the First Bat- 
talion had been dribbling into Ayr. You could 
tell them by their wan, fever-wasted faces, and by 
the little ribbons of claret and white that they 
wore on the sleeves of their coats, the claret and 
white that marked them as the " service bat- 
talion." And there Avas in their faces, too, the 
calm, confident look of men who had hobnobbed 
with death, and had come away unafraid. Every 
one of them had the same tale. "We're tired 
of the depot already. They 're a new bunch 
here, and we want to get back with the crowd we 
know." There was no talk of patriotism, or 
duty; all this had given place to the pride of 
local achievement. To those men, my little 
claret and white ribbon was all the introduction 
I needed. 1 was a member of the First Bat- 

235 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

talion. As I hobbled along the main street of 
Ayr, a crowd of them bore down on me. A 
heterogeneous bunch they were, bored to death 
with the quietness of the Scottish town, shouting 
boisterous greetings long before they reached me. 
The lot of us took dinner together and afterwards 
went in a body to the theater. The theater pro- 
prietor refused unconditionally to take any 
money from us. We were " returned wounded," 
and the best seats in the house were ours. Four 
or five of our party had just returned from Edin- 
burgh, where they had spent their furloughs. 
They had been received royally. The civic au- 
thorities had made arrangements with the owners 
of the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh to put the New- 
foundlanders up free of cost during their stay. 
The First Battalion had spent their money 
freely while they were garrisoning Edinburgh 
Castle, and the authorities had not forgotten it. 
I hated to leave those men of the First Bat- 
talion, who welcomed me so heartily. I was glad 
at the thought of getting back to the States 
again ; but it was strange to think that I was no 
longer a soldier, that my days of fighting were 
over. An inexpressible sadness came over me as 
I bade good-by to them. Some of their names I 

236 



"FEENISH" 

do not know, but tliey were all my friends. 
There are others like them in various hospitals 
in England and Egypt ; and also in a shady, tree- 
dotted ravine on the Peninsula of Gallipoli there 
is a row of graves, where also are my friends of 
the First Newfoundland Regiment. 

The men our regiment lost, although they 
gladly fought a hopeless fight, have not died in 
vain. Constantinople has not been taken, and 
the Gallipoli campaign is fast becoming a 
memory, but things our men did there will not 
soon be forgotten. The foremost advance on the 
Suvla Bay front is Donnelly's Post on Caribou 
Ridge, made by the Newfoundlanders. It is 
called Donnelly's Post because it is here that 
Lieutenant Donnelly won his Military Cross. 
The hitherto unknown ridge from which the 
Turkish machine guns poured their concentrated 
death into our trenches stands as a monument to 
the initiative of the Newfoundlanders. It is now 
Caribou Ridge as a recognition of the men who 
wear the deer's head badge. From Caribou 
Ridge the Turks could enfilade parts of our firing 
line. For weeks they had continued to pick off 
our men one by one. You could almost tell when 
your turn was coming. I know, because from 

237 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

Caribou Eidge came the bullet that sent me off 
the Peninsula. The machine guns on Caribou 
Ridge not only swept part of our trench, but 
commanded all of the intervening ground. This 
ground was almost absolutely devoid of cover. 
Several attempts had been made to rush 
those guns. All these attacks had failed, held 
up by the murderous machine-gun fire. Whole 
companies had essayed the task, but all had been 
repulsed, and almost annihilated. It remained 
for Lieutenant Donnelly to essay the impossible. 
Under cover of darkness, Lieutenant Donnelly, 
with only eight men, surprised the Turks in the 
post that now bears his name. The captured 
machine gun he turned on the Turks to repulse 
constantly launched bomb and rifle attacks. 
Just at dusk one evening Donnelly stole out to 
Caribou Ridge and took the Turks by storm. 
They had been accustomed before that to see 
large bodies of men swarm over the parapet in 
broad daylight, and had been able to wipe them 
out with machine-gun fire. All that night the 
Turks strove to recover their lost ground. The 
darkness that confused the enemy was the New- 
foundlanders' ally. One of Donnelly's men, 
Jack Hynes, crawled away from his companions 

238 



"FEENISH" 

to a point about two hundred yards to the left. 
All through the night he poured a rapid stream 
of fire into the flank of the enemy's attacking 
party. So steadily did he keep it up that the 
Turks were deluded into thinking we had men 
there in force. When reinforcements arrived, 
Donnelly's eight men were reduced to two. 
Dawn showed the havoc wrought by the gallant 
little group. The ground in front of the post 
was a shambles of piled up Turkish corpses. 
But daylight showed something more to the 
credit of the Newfoundlanders than the mere 
taking of the ridge. It showed Jack Hynes pur- 
posely falling back over exposed ground to draw 
the enemy's attention from Sergeant Greene, who 
was coolly making trip after trip between the 
ridge and our lines, carrying a wounded man in 
his arms every time until all our wounded were 
in safety. Hynes and Greene were each given 
a Distinguished Conduct Medal. None was ever 
more nobly earned. 

The night the First Newfoundland Regiment 
landed in Suvla Bay there were about eleven 
hundred of us. In December when the British 
forces evacuated Gallipoli, to our regiment fell 
the honor of being nominated to fight the rear- 

239 



TRENCHING AT GALLIPOLI 

guard action. This is the highest recognition 
a regiment can receive; for the duty of a rear 
guard in a retreat is to keep the enemy from 
reaching the main body of troops, even if this 
means annihilation for itself. At Lemnos 
Island the next day when the roll was called, of 
the eleven hundred men who landed when I did, 
only one hundred and seventy-one answered 
" Here." 

After the First Newfoundland Regiment left 
the Peninsula, they went to Egypt to guard the 
Suez Canal from the long-expected attack of the 
Turks. After they had been rested a little while, 
they were recruited up to full fighting strength, 
again, and were sent to France. In the recent 
drive of the Allies against the German positions 
on the Somme, the regiment has won for itself 
fresh laurels. The " Times " correspondent at 
British headquarters in France sent the follow- 
ing on July 13th : 

" The Newfoundlanders were the only overseas 
troops engaged in these operations. The story 
of their heroic part cannot yet be told in full, 
but when it is it will make Newfoundland very 
proud. The battalion was pushed up as what 
may be called the third wave in the attack on 

240 



"FEENISH" 

probably the most formidable section of the 
whole German front through an almost over- 
whelming artillery fire and a cross-ground swept 
by an enfilading machine-gun fire from hidden 
positions. The men behaved with completely 
noble steadiness and courage." 



THE END 



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